Nov/Dec 2026 (Volume 18, Issue 6)

 

By Arvid Huisman

 

It started simply enough. I always enjoyed hearing older relatives tell stories about our ancestors. Sometime in my 20s I decided it would be fun to start collecting family data. It wasn’t until my 40s, however, that I began to get serious about genealogy and it grew into a hobby. In August 2001 it became an obsession.

 

As a youngster I learned that when my great-grandfather, Folkert Huisman, was a youngster in Germany, he and his mother were abandoned by his father. When his mother remarried, her new husband, Klaas Huisman, adopted young Folkert and gave him the Huisman name. Klaas was known to be a kind and Godly man and helped shape young Folkert into an ambitious and honorable young man. In the late 1860s, when Folkert was about nine-years-old, the family emigrated to Iowa, settling on a farm in Grundy County southeast of Ackley.

 

The only thing we knew of Folkert’s birth father was his last name: Franken. This mystery fueled my interest in genealogy.

 

 

The advent of the internet opened new doors for genealogical research and in the late 1990s I joined an internet “listserv” for descendants of immigrants from the former German province of East Friesland from where many of my ancestors had emigrated.

 

The procedure on this e-mail group was to post the names of families or individuals for whom you were searching. Several times I had posted my great-grandfather’s story, seeking a connection to his biological family. I received no replies.

 

Then, in August 2001, I sent out another e-mail seeking a connection to my Franken roots. The next morning I found an e-mail from a LaVerne Franken who wrote, “I think we’ve made a connection!”

 

LaVerne, who lives in Quincy, Ill., wrote that he and a relative had recently learned from an old Low German letter found in an attic that his great-great-uncle, Tjark Franken, had married and fathered a child in East Friesland before moving to Illinois where he re-married and lived a long life as a farmer. The letter was written in 1886 by Folkert Huisman and mailed from Ackley, Iowa, to Tjark Franken of Chandlerville, Ill. Folkert wrote, “Father, I have just learned of your whereabouts.” He proudly described his young family and his farm operation in Grundy County and then pleaded for an opportunity to visit his father. So far as we know, his father never replied. Ironically, he kept the letter.

 

Nearly 120 years later, Tjark Franken’s descendants were looking for Folkert. They were unaware that his surname had changed to Huisman. When LaVerne Franken saw my e-mail searching for Folkert’s father, he was convinced we had a match.

 

Though doubtful, I responded immediately. In return LaVerne e-mailed a photo of Tjark’s brother, promising a photo of Tjark in the future. Tjark’s brother strongly resembled my father. I knew then we had made a connection. 

 

We made arrangements for LaVerne to visit us here in Iowa. When we met he looked me over and said, “You’re not going to believe this.” He handed me the only known photograph of my biological great-great-grandfather and I stared at the face of a very tall man who resembled me and some of my family.

 

LaVerne gave me the original letter my great-grandfather had written pleading in vain for an opportunity to meet the father who had abandoned him nearly 30 years earlier. Subsequently, LaVerne and another family member shared information tracing my Franken bloodline back to the 17th century.

 

The excitement generated by solving this mystery motivated me to dig deeper. I have traced most of my ancestors back into the 1600s, a few as far back as around 1500, but have hit a brick wall on my maternal grandfather’s lineage. I’m still working on it. 

 

Searching for ancestors can dig up some fascinating details. I learned that through my paternal grandmother’s family I am related to King Charles III of the United Kingdom through the late Queen Elizabeth’s German line. The last time someone estimated the relationship it was determined I am somewhere around one-millionth in line for the throne. 

 

Why this obsession with roots? The more I learn about my ancestors the better I understand myself. A good deal of who I am is tied to who they were. When I first saw the photograph of my Great-Great Grandpa Franken, I quickly realized from whom I inherited my height. When I was a teenager I watched two of my great-uncles earnestly debate an issue and realized from where that slice of my personality came.

 

Unlike some hobbies, genealogy is something I can continue to work on as I grow older. As they say, old genealogists never die, they just lose their census. 

 

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