My favorite question -- "Why There?"

How many times have you heard a curious child ask, "Why?"  I'm afraid I've lost a bit of my innocent childhood curiosity, but in my dotage, my favorite family history question is "Why There?"

We genealogists spend a lot of time on who (names), what (births, marriages, and deaths), when (dates) and where (location). Our databases are full of who, what, when, and where. Those databases don't usually have a place for "Why?" I'm especially interested in migration and the geography of family history. I always wonder: why did they settle there?

• Why did Johan Månson settle in Iowa? (see November 2015 post)
• Why did Sipke Zorgdrager immigrate to Stephenson County, Illinois (see March 3, 2016 post)
• Why did James Fawkner take his young family to Fort Madison, Iowa? (see June 4, 2015 post)

I think this question so enriches family history research that I developing a new lecture titled "Why Were They There" for presentation at the Southern California Genealogical Society's Jamboree in June (http://genealogyjamboree.com/) and the Northwest Genealogy Conference in Arlington, Washington, in August (http://stillygen.org/cpage.php?pt=50).

Probably the two most obvious reasons for an ancestor settling there are livelihood opportunities or friends or relatives who preceded them. Chain migration is classic. One satisfied immigrant from a family, or even an entire village, often became a magnet for many more to follow. The result, especially in the western Midwest and Great Plains, is a map dotted with hundreds of urban neighborhoods and small towns with strong ethnic identities that persist a hundred or more years later.

I am still unsettled about just which case studies I will use in my lecture. Johan Månson, Sipke Zorgdrager, and James Fawkner are all candidates. But, I'm also thinking about why, only a week after his marriage in Bristol, England, John Tidball took his wife to a southern Minnesota farm in 1884. I'm also wondering why a Italian teenager landed in a small town on the North Shore of Lake Superior. And why, my young German great-grandfather went directly to southeast Iowa in 1866.

Perhaps my favorite "why there" story involves a casket. Katharyn Fawkner did in Los Angeles in 1954. The story of how she got from Minnesota to California, which an in-between stop in  Chicago, is a good one. But this is the story about her life after death. You see, her California death certificate stated that burial was in Woodland Cemetery in New York City. Why there? The answer involves a cousin who married into wealth. The story is a bit too involved to tell this week, but if Katharyn's spirit moves me, I might tell it next week. This, of course, also could by my segue way back to the Fawkner family -- a family about which there is so much more to share.

Braided Migration Streams: Fonkerts and Weedas

One of my favorite geographical features is braided streams. These are streams that run across terrain so flat that the they split into diverging channels that meander, wend back and forth across each other, and recombine as the stream works across a meadow or down a shallow valley on its way to the sea. Something like this happens to individuals and families as they stream across time toward the present. Paths cross, separate, and sometimes come back together in the most unexpected places.

John Fonkert-Monefay Hanson Marriage, Tingley, Iowa

Let's start with the easy part. John Marion Fonkert married Monefay Grace Hanson 10 August 1946 in the wood frame Methodist church in tiny Tingley, Iowa.  Monefay had grown up in Tingley in Ringgold County along the Iowa-Missouri border. John had grown up in deeply Dutch Sioux County in far northwest Iowa.  Monefay's father and mother were Swedish and German, respectively. John's parents were 2nd generation Dutch immigrants.


It's not completely clear how John and Monefay met, except that it was in Seattle, a very long way from Iowa. John Fonkert, who had been in active duty since May 1942, shipped out for foreign service 7 August 1945, one day after the atom bomb was dropped on Hiroshima and two days before the attack on Nagasaki. Actually, because the International Dateline was involved, I'm not completely certain of the exact timing of his departure relative to the dropping of the bombs. One wonders what was on the mind of the sailors aboard the ship -- I have in my mind that it was a hospital ship. He returned from foreign service in March 1946 and was discharged -- at Seattle, I think -- in April 1946. This is all from his World War II Bonus case file (State Historical Society of Iowa).

I think it was the summer of 1946 (1945 seems unlikely, given the status of the war) that Monefay Hanson and some high school or college friends took a road trip to Seattle. How they managed this, I have no idea. Anyway, the story is that John and Monefay met in Seattle.  If it was the summer of 1946, it was a short engagement.

Thus concludes the front end of this story. Now for the short middle part. Monefay's mother was Eda (aka Edith) Romkee, daughter of William Romkee and Cahta (aka Kate) Gerloff. Edith had a sister named Cahta (aka Kate) who married Dick Weeda in Ringgold County in 1903.

Now, the back end of the story. While researching my Fonkert ancestors, I found my great-grandfather -- John Marion's grandfather -- living in Pella, Iowa, in 1870 with the family of Dirk and Maaike Weeda. I wasn't aware of the 1903 Weeda-Romkee marriage at this point, but the Weeda name was familiar from childhood visits to Tingley. It seemed there were Weedas everywher. Now, I wondered, could this Pella family be the Weeda family that Kate Romkee married into in Ringgold County?

1870 U.S. Census, Pella, Marion County, Iowa

Indeed, it was. In 1870, Dirk and Maaike Weeda had a son, Arie, 18.  In March 1871, Arie married Aaltje van Vliet in Pella. Dick (actually, Dirk) Weeda was born in December. The Arie Weeda family was living in Tingley, Ringgold County in 1900; Dick, 28, headed a separate household including his brother, Neal, and his sister, Maggie. Then, in December 1903, Dick Weeda married Kate Romkee, daughter of William Romkee and Katie Gerloff.  The bride was Monefay Hanson's aunt.

Kate Romkee and Dick Weeda

Put in personal terms, my great-grandfather, Peter Fonkert emigrated to Pella, Iowa, in 1870, where he first boarded with the family of Dirk Weeda. More than 75 years later, my father, John Marion Fonkert, married Monefay Grace Hanson, a niece of Kate Romkee, who married Dirk Weeda's grandson, Dick.


Weeda is a Dutch name. Arie Weeda was born to Dirk Weeda and Maaike Waardenburg 21 November 1851 in Oud Beijerland -- where Peter Fonkert was born in 1845. There is no evidence the Fonkerts and Weedas were related, but the families likely knew each other in Oud Beijerland. It is possible Peter knew he had a place to stay when he arrived in Pella.