Dederika Willemina van der Meij

Happy 150th birthday to Dederika Willemina van der Meij, my great-grandmother. She was born 1 July 1866, one year before the first Canada Day!

She was the first child born to her father Jan (age 24) and mother Johanna (age 30), who were married 8 months earlier and lived in Zutphen, Gelderland, the Netherlands. Jan and Johanna had another daughter, Hermina, two years later, but Johanna died soon after, leaving Jan to care for two small children on his own.

Jan appears to have immigrated to Chicago with his young girls shortly thereafter, where he met Anna Jeltes Nederhoed and her little boy Jelte, and married her in 1872. They had four more children, one in Chicago and three after moving to Missaukee county Michigan around 1873, about five years after the founding of Vogel Center there. Here they took up a life of pioneer farming.

As the oldest child, Rika was a great help on the farm, to the point her father refused to give her up to either work for others or entertain marriage. But she stood her ground and soon got her way. 

In 1885, at age 18, Rika married Roelof Geerts Brinks, age 23, in Vogel Center. Over the next 20 years, they had 6 children. The youngest was my grandfather, Herman, born in 1905, when Rika was 39.

In 1900, they lived next door to her father (and now second step-mother, Marge Martens). In 1910, they noted they could speak English, but probably spoke Dutch at home.

Over the next 20 years, her kids grew up and married off, one by one. By 1930, she was 63 and living with only her husband Ralph, but their kids and grandkids were all over the county nearby.

Rika, at age 63, lost her oldest daughter, who died in childbirth at age 40. Five years later, Rika was widowed at age 68. In 1940, she was living on her own and listed her occupation as a midwife, at age 73.

Rika lived 16 years as a widow, dying of heart disease in 1951 at age 85. She was buried in the Vogel Center Cemetery.
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