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- Virginia and Charles are confirmed people from Hazel Maes' memory and others. But that is as far as my notes from Aunt Hazel go. The other names in this family are from the manifest of the ship Maria from Amsterdam to Baltimore July 1847.
Helena's maiden name is from the marriage record of Charles and Anna Gerdes which lists his parents as Henry and Helen.
I am stuck on this family. I'm pretty sure they are my ancestors. Charles' name and birth year match and the parents names match those in one of his marriage record. Virginia's name is not an exact match to the baby, Jannetje, but it is a plausible anglicazation and her birth year matches. The year and theiir place of origin, Sluis, matches up with a biography on Rev. Charles VanTourenhout. (However Charles' descendents were told of his coming to the US with wife Sophie about 1858.) But it still bugs me that I cannot find any other references for 5 of the 7 individuals in this family. There was a terrible cholera epidemic in St. Louis in 1849 that killed 10% of the city and hit the German immigrant community particularly hard. That may be the cause of their dissapearances. (I'd love to look over St. Louis Genealogical Society Quarterly III:1 (March, 1970) "Cholera Deaths in St. Louis, Missouri, 1849" by Dorothy A. Griffity and I. Baker. But that will have to wait until I can leisurely visit that city's libraries or the Jefferson National Expansion Museum, as they don't seem to put very much of anything useful on the web...) I am reminded of the Bible story of Abraham, who was promised many heirs, but it wasn't looking good there for awhile for him.
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