Ancestry Magazine

If they weren’t missing, exactly why was this family so hard to find?

They, of course, were not lost. They knew exactly where they had settled, where and whom their children had married, and where eventually they had died. I was the one with the problem—searching for them year after year without finding them.

They were Sake and Jeltje Sjaarda and their five children—Aafke, Kornelis, Geert, Tjeerd, and Jacob. On 10 May 1888, the SS Zaandam arrived in America from the Netherlands with the Sjaarda family on board.

Jeltje already had relatives in America. In 1873 her mother, stepfather, and four stepbrothers had settled in Cook County, Illinois. It would make sense, therefore, that Sake and Jeltje also would have settled in Cook County. Nevertheless, try as I might, I found no trace of them there or anywhere else I searched for the past twenty years.

When Sake emigrated from the Netherlands in 1888, he left behind his only remaining brother—my great-grandfather 
who had only one son, my grandfather, who had only one son, my father. Because my father was the only son of an only son, I knew of no other people named Sjaarda.

I was born in 1940 in the Netherlands. In 1951 my family immigrated to Canada, and, in 1962, I married an American citizen and moved to the United States. When I began researching my Sjaarda roots, quite serendipitously I found that the nearest branches of Sjaardas had moved to the United States in 1853 and 1888. The two brothers who immigrated in 1853 died without leaving issue. I was therefore determined to find the family that came in 1888—Sake and Jeltje.

For twenty years I scoured hundreds of possible sources. I exhausted census records by using every possible combination of letters and numbers. Since the Dutch “j” is pronounced like an “h,” some Sjaardas who moved to the United States changed their names to Shaarda, Sherda, and Sjarda. I tried all those, as well as other possible spellings, such as Cherda and Tjerda, sometimes to the ridiculous.

Dr. Robert Swierenga’s compilation of The Dutch-Born and Their Families in the 1880 and 1900 Census of Chicago and Cook County did not list the family. Thinking that perhaps in the intervening twelve years between 1888 and 1900, Sake had died and Jeltje remarried, I scanned every family in the compilation to come up with Jeltje and the children under a different surname, supposing that if she had remarried it would have been to another Hollander. As always, I came up empty-handed. Taking into consideration that they might have moved elsewhere, I searched records of adjacent counties, but, again, nothing. Finally, sadly, I surmised that this family had met with some catastrophe. Still, just in case a descendant of Sake and Jeltje was looking for his or her roots, I put up a website, hoping that I might hear from them. Although the website garnered many inquiries about Sjaarda ancestors, the questions were never from “my” Sjaardas.

In the meantime I continued researching Dutch-American emigration. I joined AADAS (the Association for the Advancement of Dutch American Studies), wrote articles, and taught genealogy specifically related to Dutch roots. For the 2005 AADAS conference, I presented a research paper on the first Dutch Mormons to cross the plains into Utah. In order to find these Dutch in Utah, I made exhaustive use of U.S. census records at Ancestry.com. At first this was an exercise in total frustration. Census takers often wrote down names as they sounded; later, transcribers, trying to decipher the handwriting, added additional mistakes. Sijderlaar in Dutch became Zudeleen, Van Streeter became Vaustretes, and De Brij became Depey. Many a Vander in Dutch became Fander, throwing off the Soundex initial, and the “n” was also often mistaken for a “u” changing the Vander to Vauder.

Nevertheless, working for weeks on this project, I gained a certain skill in tweaking census information without actually using names. I could enter the country of origin, the emigration year, an approximate birth year, and choose a state. In return, I would get a list of emigrants from the Netherlands during a specific year who were in an approximate age range. Since the Dutch never comprised the largest group of immigrants in the United States, the numbers were manageable. I was able to scour through seven hundred or eight hundred names at one time without difficulty, and, having solid Dutch language skills, I could recognize names no matter how distorted. Matching these names against other records, I was able to piece together the first Dutch Mormon families who settled in Utah.

At one point, the idea crossed my mind that I might be able to do the same with Sake, Jeltje, and their children. I knew the year of immigration, their birthdates, and their country of origin. Choosing Illinois as the most likely state, I began with Sake’s information. Nothing. I tried Jeltje’s. Bingo. She was listed as Sherden, Jennie; her birthdate and emigration year matched. No wonder I had not been able to find them even using Soundex—I had never thought about putting an “n” at the end of the name.

Excited about the possibility of finding them after all these years, I quickly clicked on the page. There they were: Conrad, Jennie, Charles, and Jacob (Tjeerd’s name had been changed to Charles, the “tj” in Dutch sounding like the “ch” so that made sense; Jacob’s name had stayed the same). The three oldest children, Aafke, Kornelis, and Geert, were apparently living elsewhere. Sake had changed his name to Conrad, and the census taker had written down Germany as his country of origin. This solved the riddle why Sake had not shown up in The Dutch-Born and Their Families compilation.

Following this information, I checked the Sherden name on the Illinois State Death Index and found Conrad and Jennie’s deaths. Their death certificates indicated that Sake/Conrad had been born in Holland.

The death certificates also stated that Conrad and Jennie were buried in Mount Greenwood Cemetery. When I contacted the staff of the closest genealogical society, one of the staff members said she knew the cemetery because her parents were buried there, and she volunteered to check out the grave markers. This yielded another piece to the puzzle: daughter Aafje/Effie and her husband were buried next to her parents. Once I knew the name of Effie’s husband—Charles Pecht—I located their marriage certificate. There, her last name was spelled Sherde, without the “n.”

Knowing I had the right family, I proceeded to find the rest of the children in the census. I found the oldest son, Cornelius, in the 1920 census with his wife and sons. Tjeerd/Charles was listed with his wife and daughter.

That leaves only the question of what happened to Geert and Jacob, but for now I have solved the major part of my puzzle, and I am happy to know that the family prospered in their new surroundings. My next step? To find the descendants of these Sherdens.

Janet Sjaarda Sheeres is the author of My Search for Sjaardas, which appeared in Ancestry Magazine in Jan uary/February 1998. Solving a Chi-Town Mystery won third-place in the 2006 ISFHWE writing competition. Janet can be reached at jsheeres@sbcglobal.net.