52 Ancestors – Page 13 – A Deck of Ancestors

52W Mark IV – Week 27: Card B1 Milton Leo Burgess and Hazel Nelson

Milton Leo Burgess (1891-1964)
Hazel Nelson (1899-1967)

We’re halfway through the 2025 edition of my take on Amy Johnson Crow’s 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks Challenge. With it I start the maternal side of my family and a new suit involving my mother’s paternal line. It’s also my Mormon lineage. In fact, my Gx4 Grandfather, William Burgess (1794-1880), joined the church in 1832, two years after it had been founded. Moreover, all eight of my maternal grandfather’s great grandparents joined the church in the 1830s and 1840s.

However, after five generations, that came to an end with my grandfather, Leo Burgess, as none of his four children were members of the church or raised Mormon. In fact, my grandfather was pretty much a lapsed Mormon, if there is such a term, by his late teens. He only returned to the church after my grandmother, Helen Lerner, passed away.

Leo’s parents, and the subject of the first card of this suit, were Milton Leo Burgess and Hazel Nelson.

Milton was born in Vernal, Utah, on September 9, 1891, the eighth of nine children born to Horace Conrad Liggett Burgess and Sarah Florilla Cook. Florilla passed away in January 1894, a few weeks after her last child, also named Sarah Florilla (“Rilla”), was born. Milton was only two years old at the time. Horace remarried shortly afterwards, to Julia Josephine Lundquist, with whom he had at least another eight or nine children. The family moved Canada when Milton was 14. They settled in Vulcan County, Alberta.

After completing a two-year mission to Australia in 1915, Milton settled in Glenwood, Alberta, which is about 22 kilometers from Cardston as the crow flies. There he worked as a farm labourer. Sometime afterwards, he met Hazel Nelson, who he married in Cardston on April 13, 1919.

Calling card of Milton Leo Burgess from his time as a Mormon missionary in Adelaide, Australia

^{Milton’s calling card from his time as a Mormon missionary in Adelaide, Australia}

Hazel’s family was amongst the earliest settlers of Cardston, Alberta, which Mormon immigrants from the United States founded in 1887. Her parents, John Alexander Nelson and Ella Elizabeth Thomas settled there in 1890. Six of their 12 children were born in Utah; the other six were born in Canada. Hazel and her sister Irene were born on December 15, 1899. They were the first twins born in Cardston. Sadly, Irene passed away five weeks later, but Hazel lived to be 67.

^{Because Hazel is listed first, I take it to mean that she was born first.}

The year after they married, Milton and Hazel had the first of their nine children, my grandfather Leo. Shortly afterwards, the family moved to Nampa, Idaho, where Milton worked at an orchard with his in-laws. In Nampa they had three more children before permanently returning to Canada in 1924.

By 1927, the family had settled in Magrath, where Milton and Hazel spent the rest of their lives. While he continued to do farm work over the decades, Milton had a wide variety of jobs. In the early 1940s he worked as a plumber. Milton later worked in a woolen mill, where he lost a finger of his left hand in a work injury. Milton also worked for a short time as a grave digger around 1950. By 1958, when he was 67, Milton retired.

My mother has told me many stories about him over the years. One story that she has recounted many times is that her grandfather would often talk about how, according to the bible, no man was meant to live more than 72 years. Milton died on September 10, 1964, the day after he turned 73.

I also have a small cache of letters Milton wrote to my grandfather in the 1940s. Most of them were gentle admonishments, such as disapproving of my grandfather working in establishments that served alcohol, coffee, and tea, or telling him that it was time to stop seeing the Catholic girl he had been dating and to find a nice Mormon girl to settle down with. Fortunately for me, my grandfather did not follow that advice, as that Catholic girl became his wife and my grandmother!

^{Screenshot of the entry for Hazel at Find a Grave, showing the headstone she shares with Milton.}

Hazel was 64 when Milton passed away. Around that time she moved to a seniors’ home in Cardston, which she derisively called “the old fools’ home”. There she met a widower, Albert Beaves, who she married in July 1967. Eight weeks later, Hazel passed away. My mother literally went from the funeral to the hospital, where I was born.

^{The newlyweds, Hazel Nelson and Albert Beaves, about July 5, 1967.}

^{“The Old Fool’s Home” – Chinook Lodge in Cardston, Alberta}

52W Mark IV – Week 26: Card K13 Elisabeth de Waard

Elisabeth “Lisabeth” de Waard (1824-1887)

Halfway through the 2025 52 Ancestors Challenge brings us to the last card on my paternal line. Last but not least, meet Lisabeth de Waard, my Gx3 grandmother.

Elisabeth de Waard was born on February 18, 1824 in Oudeschild, a village on the island of Texel, the largest of the Wadden Sea Islands off the north shore of the Netherlands. It is the only settlement on the island located on the coast. While there is now a ferry dock on the southernmost point of the island, Oudeschild was the only port on Texel in Elisabeth’s time.

Thus, it should come as no surprise that her paternal grandfather, husband, and at least three of her brothers were sailors. Despite the seafaring lives of many of her relatives, Elisabeth’s father, Jan Teunisz de Waard, was a labourer at the time she was born. Jan became a shopkeeper shortly afterwards and remained in that profession until he died in 1863 at age 76.

Elisabeth’s mother was Cornelia Pieters Kooij. Jan and Cornelia’s marriage intrigues me, because Jan was Protestant and Cornelia was Roman Catholic. Jan was the first direct ancestor I found on my paternal line who was not Catholic. They married at the Catholic church on Texel.

Up until the mid to late 20^th Century, Protestants and Catholics in the Netherlands kept well apart. Each had their own schools, newspapers, sports clubs, political parties, and social organizations. Intermarriage between the two groups was not common or as widely accepted as it is now. The 1830 census shows that their eldest child, Teunis, was a Protestant like his father, but the rest of their eight children, were Catholic like their mother.

One might think that my great grandmother’s name was Elisabeth and Lisabeth was her nickname. However, as can be seen above, her father named her as “Lisabeth” when he registered her birth. The only place I have found her name recorded as Elisabeth was in the Bevolkingsregisters (population registers). Moreover, the 1840 census listed her as Betje, another common Dutch nickname for Elisabeth.

One of the many population registers showing my great grandmother as “Elisabeth”. Cornelis and Elisabeth’s names are crossed out because they moved to a different house. In fact, they moved around Den Helder a lot!

The census records also show that Lisabeth lived in Oudeschild at least into her late teens. In fact, the registration of her marriage to Cornelis Ran shows that she was still resident on Texel when they married on February 6, 1851 in Den Helder, where Cornelis was an apprentice harbour pilot. While it appears that Cornelis had lived on the mainland for many years by the time they married, he had deep roots in Oudeschild. It is likely that Jan and Lisabeth came together through familial connections.

Lisabeth and Cornelis settled into life in Den Helder, where they had seven children – five girls and two boys. The boys, who were the youngest, were also drawn to naval life, although as members of the navy.

The couple spent the rest of their lives in the port city. Lisabeth passed away in Den Helder on July 18, 1887, at the age of 63. She was buried in Huisduinen, a village outside of Den Helder, four days later. Cornelis lived another ten years.

*Weekblad van Den Helder en het Nieuwediep*, 10 February 1851, page 3
Civil Register. Deceased: Lisabeth de Waard, wife of Cornelis Ran, age 63.

Two suits down, two to go!

52W Mark IV – Week 25: Card K12 Cornelis Ran

Continuing with the foray into my direct Dutch ancestors who were not farmers or labourers, meet Cornelis Ran, my Gx3 Grandfather. In his occupation, Cornelis was following in the footsteps of his father, Reijer Jansz Ran, at least as much as you can follow on the confines of a boat or ship. Cornelis’s maternal grandfather and great grandfather were also sailors, although their forebears were innkeepers, bricklayers, and bakers.

Reijer and his wife Maartje Klaas Gomes had eleven children, all born on Texel. Remarkably for the time, all but two survived to adulthood. Cornelis, born on November 21, 1824, was the sixth of these eleven children. He was born in Oudeschild, a coastal village on the east coast of the island of Texel, which lies only a couple of kilometers across the Marsdiep from the mainland city of Den Helder, a major Dutch port and naval city. Several generations of Cornelis’s ancestors spent their lives in Oudeschild.

Top portion of Cornelis and Elisabeth’s marriage registration

Cornelis’s life on the water was spent as a harbour pilot and sailor. He was serving his apprenticeship as a harbour pilot in Den Helder when he married Elisabeth “Lisbeth” de Waard there on February 6, 1851. Lisbeth, who also went by Betje, was born on Texel in 1824. Delightfully, Cornelis and his sister Johanna Maria were both married on the same day and at the same place, possibly in a joint family celebration in Den Helder.

From the *Weekblad van Den Helder en het Nieuwediep*, 10 February 1851, page 3. It shows the double-marriage of Johanna Maria Ran (to Reijer Molenaar) and Cornelis Ran (to Lisbeth de Waard).
The item below the civil registration notice are odd little bits of news: “The King of Prussia appointed 1,152 knights in the previous year.” “The Governor of Egypt, Abbas Pacha, is totally insane.”

Elisabeth and Cornelis remained in Den Helder for the rest of their lives, where they raised seven children. Again, remarkably for their time, all seven of their children lived well into adulthood. All seven also went on to marry.

Over those years, Cornelis continued in his profession, working as a harbour pilot and as a sailor until about 1886, when he was 62. Records show that Cornelis had no occupation from 1886 to 1890. This suggests he might have retired. However, he was working again as a sailor in 1890, so it is not clear if he had briefly retired, had been unable to work, or had been unable to find work.

Elisabeth passed away in 1887 at the age of 63 and was buried in Huisduinen, a village near Den Helder. Cornelis lived another ten years, dying in Den Helder on June 26, 1897, at the age of 72. He was also buried in Huisduinen, on June 29, 1897.

52W Mark IV – Week 24: Card K11 Johanna Adriana Puinbroek

I am terribly, terribly far behind with this year’s 52 Ancestors Challenge. Ironically, I thought I would be much more focused on the writing, since I had thought that I had done a thorough job on the research for the individuals I had been planning to write about. How wrong I was!

Not only did I discover that I had a lot of gaps in my research, I kept getting sucked into rabbit holes of other research. Particularly so for Johanna Adriana Puinbroek, my Great x3 Grandmother. For years her parents, Johannes Puinbroek (1786-1865) and Maria Theresia Letens (1802-1848), have been a mystery to me. So instead of writing about Johanna I spent most of the last several weeks researching her parents. After overcoming a litany of hurdles I won’t detail here, I finally cracked through some brick walls.

But first, Johanna. I find her interesting in her own right for several reasons. One is where she was born. The vast majority of my Dutch ancestors are from the province of Noord Holland, with one branch originating in Zuid Holland and migrating to Noord Holland in the early 1800s. But not Johanna.

Johanna Adriana’s birth registration. “Ledens” was one of the many spelling variations for her mother’s surname; there are also many iterations of the spelling of “Puinbroek” in the records.

Johanna was born on August 2, 1822 in Heinkenszand, a village on Walcheren, a former island that is now a peninsula in the province of Zeeland. It is almost as far down the Dutch coast as you can get from Den Helder, Noord Holland, where she and her parents moved before Johanna turned two. In a country where it seems that travel to the next town is still a major undertaking for the locals, literally moving from one end of the country to another in the early 19th century seems quite amazing.

It is largely speculation based on little evidence, but I suspect the move might have been more a result of her parent’s personal circumstances than anything to do with what was happening in Zeeland at the time. Johannes and Maria were not married when Johanna was born; in fact, they never married during the almost 25 years that they were together. That might not be unusual in itself.

However, when Maria conceived Johanna Adriana, Johannes was married to another woman, Johanna Judoca van Haever (1786-1823). While Johannes and Johanna Judoca were the same age, Johannes was 16 years older than Maria. Johanna Judoca died in April 1822, shortly after giving birth to her and Johannes’s sixth child, Josephus Bernardus. Josephus died three months later, in July.

The following month Johanna Adriana was born to Johannes and Maria. In fact, the birth registration for Johanna Adriana shows that Johannes and Maria were living in different towns about 40 kilometers apart. Maria was living in Heinkenszand, where Johanna Adriana was born. Johannes was living in Vrasene, Oost-Vlaanderen, where he was born. Vrasene is just outside of Antwerp, which was still part of the Netherlands. Belgium did not become a country until 1830. Vrasene is about 10 kilometers from Sint Jansteen, where Johanna Judoca lived her entire life. So it appears Johannes was not living near either of his partners at the time.

Sometime before 1824, Johannes, Maria, and Johanna Adriana moved to Den Helder. It appears that only two of Johannes and Johanna Judoca’s children survived childhood. They would have been 12 and 9 when their mother died and their father moved north, but they did not accompany him. They both stayed in Zeeland. I don’t know who raised them after their father left for Den Helder.

In fact, I doubt they ever saw their father again. When Johannes and Johanna Judoca’s eldest son, Dominique, married in Sint Jansteen in 1838, he attested that he did not know if his father was alive and that he did not know his father’s last residence. It would follow that Dominique likely had no idea about Johanna Adriana or his other half siblings.

The passage from Dominique Puijenbroek’s marriage registration in which he attests to the fact he had no knowledge of his father’s whereabouts. In fact, Dominique said that he believed his father was deceased.

In Den Helder, Johannes and Maria had four more children. The first, Frederika, was born on February 23, 1824, but she did not survive the day. Their last child, Willem, was born in 1834. As of 1840, the family was still living together in Den Helder, although Johannes and Maria remained unmarried. It’s a mystery to me why Johannes and Maria never married. Since Johanna Judoca had passed away, I cannot find any impediment to them marrying – to each other or anyone else.

Five years later, in 1845 when Johanna Adriana was 23 years old, Maria married a sailor named Jacob Pel. Maria was 42; Jacob was 29 – only six years older than Johanna Adriana. Like Maria, Jacob was also born in Zeeland, although by the time he was required to register for compulsory military service he was living in Noord Holland. The couple never had children and the marriage was short, as Maria died in December 1848, the day after her 46th birthday. It does not appear that Jacob ever married again.

A year after Maria married Jacob, her former partner Johannes married Cornelia Bakker, on April 2, 1846. Johannes, who was then 60, was 18 years older than Cornelia, who was 42. There were children in this marriage. Despite Cornelia’s much younger age, Johannes outlived her. She died on February 20, 1859. Johannes died on January 1, 1865.

On June 3, 1847, two years after her mother married Jacob and one year after her father married Cornelia, Johanna Adriana married Jan Cornelis Bakker, a 28-year-old sailor who was living in Den Helder. Johanna was 24 at the time. They had one child together, my Gx2 Grandfather Cornelis Jan Bakker, who was born in 1855. Unfortunately, Jan died young, at age 40, when Cornelis was only four years old.

The top and bottom of Johanna Adriana and Jan’s marriage registration. The bottom half notes that Johannes Puinbroek could not read or write. It also bears the signature of Maria Letens.

Within two years of Jan’s death, on June 16, 1861, Johanna Adriana married Pieter Dekker (1813-1885), in Den Helder. Pieter was also a sailor and spent many decades at that profession, although when Johanna died on June 24, 1881 he was a shopkeeper in Den Helder. Johanna and Pieter never had any children.

*Alkmaarsche Courant*, June 9, 1861. “Civil Register. Married June 7. Pieter Dekker, widower of Siesje Boon, from Alkmaar, and Johanna Puimbroek, widow of Jan Cornelis Bakker, from Den Helder.”

The account of Johanna and her parents is one of the more complicated stories in my family history. The countless hours of research I poured into finding it out reflects that complexity.

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