Rotgert Berends Brinks

Happy 225th Birthday to my great-great-great-grandfather Rotgert Berends Brinks.
When Rotgert Berends Brinks was born on July 21, 1798, in Drouwenerveen, Drenthe, Netherlands (near the current German border), his father, Berend, was 25 and his mother, Grietien Rutgers, was 21.

He had an older sister and a younger brother. His father died when Rotgert was 8 years old, and his mother, a 29-year-old widow, never remarried.

At age 27, He married Jantien Geerts Hilbrands (age 21) on May 7, 1825, in Gasselte, Drenthe, Netherlands. They had seven children in 20 years. Their second and third sons both died in infancy, and both were named Geert. Their fourth son was also named Geert, and lived into adulthood and became my 2nd great grandfather. (The Dutch had a tradition of naming younger children the same name as deceased children; hence, three Geerts.)

He died on June 28, 1862, in Emmen, Drenthe, Netherlands, at the age of 63. The church pictured is from Emmen in 1856.

​Rotgert never immigrated from the Netherlands, but son Geert immigrated to Ottawa county in Michigan in 1867, and immigrated again in 1882 to a new Dutch settlement in Missaukee county.