Birthday Research Trip - 2025

Spent my birthday in typical fashion by doing a genealogical research trip. This year it was a trip to the archives of Wabash College in Crawfordsville, Indiana where one of only two known copies exist of "The History and Genealogy of the Groendyke Family in the United States", published in 1950 by Howard H. Groendyke.

I'd made a trip over to the Lilly Library once before, only to find out that they were closed, so this time I planned ahead and made sure that they were going to be open and would be ready for me when I arrived.

The book was a typewritten manuscript full of information on the family, down to at least my grandparents and uncle - though they had misplaced him as a child of his grandparents.  Mr. Groendyke had spent a lot of time compiling information from various family groups from across the country.

Though I was hoping that the book might have some insight on the earlier generations, I did not find any 'aha' moments that would straighten out the earlier branches of the family.  The book did provide some background on the Dutch settlements on the South River and in New Amsterdam and some of the records found there with the early branches of the familes, but then made some suppositions as to how all of the branches were tied together.

Still nothing yet that will definitively tie our ancestor, James Groendyke (1770-1836) and wife Johanna Antonides into the earlier branches.   Many interenet trees and sources have James as a son of Nicholas and Violet Story, whereas this work seems to feel that James was the son of Nicholas and Catherine Peterson.

Either way, the tradition of James' father dying in a shipwreck is repeated here and that he was raised by an uncle.  Is that uncle the Revolutionary War soldier Johannes "John" Groenendyke (1718-1785) and wife Sarah Lake (1718-1771)? 

Will be working through the images I was able to gather from this manuscript to search for further clues, updating my database and also entries of the family on WikiTree.

FOIA Requests for C-Files

 The Reclaim The Records site just won a FOIA Lawsuit against the Veterans Administration and created a new site to allow researchers to request C-Files (Claim Files) from the VA.

These claims files, according to their press release :

A claims file, or C-File, is the collected file documenting various types of veteran benefits to which a veteran (or their family and heirs) accessed or attempted to access during or after their service, including a military pension, health care, disability or life insurance policies, educational benefits (the GI Bill), mortgage assistance (VA loans), and more.

The vast majority of these files, including all C-Files active since the early 1950s, are still stored within the VA, and have not yet been transferred to the US National Archives and Records Administration (NARA). They often contain tens or sometimes hundreds of pages about the veteran's service and subsequent benefits, and often some basic information about their military service, incredible historical materials that have usually never been seen before.

A C-File can be just a few pages long, or sometimes even a few hundred pages long, depending on which claims were filed with the VA by veterans or their next of kin. C-File records for deceased veterans are usually completely open to the public under FOIA, although occasionally they have a few minor redactions.

So on Christmas morning, I began to request the files of some World War II veterans, including my grandfather - William Lee Wright, and my maternal uncles, Harold Lambertson and Floyd Lambertson.  I've also requested the file of my father-in-law, Luther Cummings.

It remains to be seen what information will be contained in these files, how long it will take to receive the information, and what hoops I might have to jump through - but any additional pieces of information just adds to the family history. 

Christmas Tree - 2024

 

Christmas Tree, 2024

Our Christmas Tree - December 2024 - photo taken in mid-December.