Do you know much about these Dutch? Have you ever wondered how those early Dutch immigrants, some of whom are your ancestors, managed to create homes, stay healthy, educate their children, celebrate their religion, farm the land, and create a prosperous life in the primitive, unsettled prairie lands of Nebraska?

If you are curious, please browse a wonderful document called, “A History of the Dutch Settlement of Lancaster County, Nebraska,” written in 1938 by Mr. Gustov A. Bade while studying for his Master’s Degree in History at the University of Nebraska. Included among the Dutch settlers mentioned by Mr. Bade are the families of Jan Hendrik te Selle and Harmen Jan te Selle. The sources of much of Mr. Bade’s research were interviews and recollections of direct descendants of Jan Hendrik and Harmen Jan. Mr. Bade’s history becomes all the more fascinating and compelling knowing that he is talking directly about our TeSelle ancestors. If you have ever been curious about these ancestors, here is your chance for some close, personal insights into their lives. Read more…

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Do you ever wonder what life was like for our Dutch immigrant ancestors during those early years on the primitive plains of Nebraska? Fortunately, we have a wonderful document describing those early years, written in 1938 by Gustav A. Bade, who is a descendant of one of those early Dutch settlers.  During the 1860′s and 1870′s a wave of immigrants moved into the midwestern plains states, drawn by the prospect of plentiful, cheap, fertile land.  Many Dutch immigrants came from Wisconsin and settled in Lancaster County, located in the southeastern corner of Nebraska.  My great-grandfather and two of his brothers were among those early Nebraska settlers.  Mr. Bade gives a detailed description of the people, their journey, their daily lives, health issues, religious activities, education, and agricultural practices.  You will enjoy reading this document to get a deeper understanding of your Dutch ancestors in the midwest.  Please leave a comment about your thoughts and reactions as you read through this history.

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When family members start talking with each other about family history, inevitably the question arises, “How are we related?” Genealogists have a relationship shorthand that uses terms like “2nd Cousin Once Removed”, or “4th Cousin on my father’s side”.  What do these terms mean, and how can we figure out our relationships, once we get beyond brother, sister, aunt, uncle, niece, and nephew?

Cousins

Typically, we use the generic term “cousin” to describe anyone in our family tree who is beyond our immediate family unit. Sometimes, however, we might like to be more precise, so here are some general guidelines:

• First Cousin:  First cousins have the same grandparents.
• Second Cousin:  Second cousins have the same great-grandparents.
• Third Cousin:  Third cousins have the same great-great-grandparents; and so on…

Note that all persons who share one of these relationship types (e.g., first cousins) must be from the same generation.

“Removed”

“Removed” means that the relatives are from different generations.  “Once removed” indicates a difference of one generation. “Twice removed” means there is a difference of two generations; and so on.  

For example, how are you related to your father’s first cousin?  The common ancestor between the two of you is your grandparents. Your father’s first cousin is one generation younger than your grandparents.  You are two generations younger than your grandparents.  The difference of one generation between the two of you gives rise to the term, “once removed”.  Therefore, you and your father’s first cousin are “first cousins, once removed”.

These extended relationships can get complicated. For a more complete explanation of “removed”, please see the charts in this article from the “Encyclopedia of Genealogy, http://www.eogen.com“.

Father’s Side or Mother’s Side

This distinction merely specifies whether to climb the father’s family tree or the mother’s family tree in order to find the common ancestor between the two relatives in question.

So, now you have the explanation of relationships, which may be more information than you wanted to know! Try to figure out how you are related to some of the people mentioned in this website. Do you find this relationship information useful, confusing, or just an esoteric exercise for genealogists to ponder. Please leave us a comment or question below. We love to get your feedback.

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Traditionally, genealogy records trace only the male branch of the family tree. What happens to the women? They simply vanish from the TeSelle genealogy! If your maiden name is TeSelle, or if one of your female ancestors was a TeSelle by birth, then you may be curious about your TeSelle ancestry.

Here is an excellent example from my own branch of the family tree.  My great-grandfather, Harmen Jan te Selle and his wife Johanna Brethouwer had seven sons and five daughters. The TeSelle genealogy shows all the sons, their spouses, and all their children.  However, for the five daughters the genealogy shows only their spouses, but offers no information about their children.

Some of you reading this may, in fact, be direct descendants of one of these five daughters, but might have a difficult time tracing your genealogy back to the TeSelle family tree.  By the same token, I probably have several cousins descended from these five ladies who are totally unknown to me.

Janna te Selle Bloemers (1796-1870)

Another example of a “vanishing” TeSelle woman is Janna te Selle (1796-1870). Janna was the older sister of Jan Albert te Selle (1800-1845), who was the father of Jan Hendrik te Selle and Harmen Jan te Selle, the two brothers who emigrated to the United States in the 1865, as well as Gerrit Jan te Selle, a third brother who emigrated in 1872.  Much is written about these three brothers in this website.

Janna actually emigrated to the United States almost 20 years earlier, in 1846, with her husband Gerrit Willem Bloemers. Janna and Gerrit had six children, but according to the male-oriented genealogical custom, no mention of the Bloemers’ children or their descendants is found in the TeSelle genealogy. To learn about them, you need to find and research the Bloemers family tree, and many other family branches if you are descended from a female member of the Bloemers family.

For more information about tracing your female ancestors, please read this excellent article and the related links.  Good luck on your genealogical journey.

Are you descended from a female TeSelle? Perhaps the Genealogy section of this website can help you find your connection to the TeSelle family. Please leave a comment about your TeSelle ancestors. What do you think are some effective ways for descendants of female TeSelles to discover their TeSelle roots?

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Genealogy comes to life when we read stories and anecdotes about real family members. Do you remember any stories about your ancestors?  Please share them with us.  All of us will gain some insights about our family, and the stories may even bring a smile to our faces.  

Written stories about the past can help us better understand the present.  Our family history is more than just nostalgia for a time gone by.  Writing about one’s family history is like putting together a jigsaw puzzle that has hundreds of pieces missing.  If you take the trouble to lay out the pieces that you do have, you begin to see a vague picture of what the complete puzzle would look like.  You start to see the contours of a landscape, dotted with a few houses and farms.  With luck you can distinguish some of the people who populated that landscape and lived in those houses.  Sometimes you will find exactly the puzzle piece you need to fill an important gap and shed new light on some adjacent pieces.

We created this website to begin assembling our own puzzle pieces, and to help those who may be searching for missing pieces of their own puzzles.  In the process we hope that you will share some of your puzzle pieces that may also fit with ours.

Our journey began with the wonderful discovery of the “Letters from America”, which shed a new light on the life and times of our ancestors and relatives who emigrated from the Netherlands to America so many years ago.  As you read those letters, you briefly find yourself in the shoes of those early settlers, struggling to build a life in a strange, new world.  Those letters represented the strong family connection between our American and Dutch families, each wanting to share their experiences and find out how their relatives are doing.  With this website we want to renew that sense of connection between our family members by sharing the stories and memorabilia that may have helped each of us become who we are today.

The family. We were a strange little band of characters trudging through life sharing diseases and toothpaste, coveting one another’s desserts, hiding shampoo, borrowing money, locking each other out of our rooms, inflicting pain and kissing to heal it in the same instant, loving, laughing, defending, and trying to figure out the common thread that bound us all together.

~Erma Bombeck

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Have your read any of the Letters from America? They are fascinating! Two young brothers, Jan Hendrik te Selle and Harmen Jan te Selle, emigrated from Winterswijk, Netherlands to Gibbsville, Wisconsin, in 1865. The two brothers later moved to Lancaster County, Nebraska, where they homesteaded farm property. In 1873 a third brother, Gerrit Jan te Selle, immigrated from Winterswijk and joined his two brothers in Nebraska.

During the 46 years from 1865 to 1911 the three brothers wrote several letters back to their mother and other brothers in Winterswijk. Thirty-five (35) of those letters were preserved at the family farm, “Fökkink”. In recent years these letters were guarded by Albert Hendrik te Selle, who, before his death in 2009, presented the letters to “The Kotten Archive” for perpetual safekeeping.

These letters have been transcribed in the original Dutch, and have been translated to English, so we can all enjoy reading about the early years of the TeSelle family in America, first in Wisconsin and later in Nebraska. Many American TeSelles are direct descendants of Jan Hendrik or Harmen Jan. These letters offer a window into their early lives in America, and provide a bridge to the life and family left behind in the Netherlands. Read a few of these letters — you will enjoy them!

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Did you know — All Te Selles are descended from one man!

Yes, we are all descended from Hermen Wijggers (aka Hermen te Selle), who lived near Winterswijk, Netherlands from 1685-1736.  But how can this Hermen te Selle possibly be the only TeSelle from whom all of us are descended?

Under the naming convention of the time, Hermen was originally given the surname “Wijggers” because of his birthplace on the farm called “Wijggershuise”.  However, in 1712 when he married and moved to the farm called “de Selle”, the common naming convention dictated that his surname change to “te Selle”, to reflect his place of residence.

In 1810 the Netherlands was annexed by Napoleon and became a part of the French empire from 1810-1813.  Legislation of that period, which has become known as the Napoleonic Code, required that every citizen must have an official name.  Those who had no fixed surname were required to choose one, as ordered by a separate decree from Napoleon on August 18, 1811.  From that time forward, all children would keep their father’s surname.  Using the Registry of Births, Deaths, and Marriages, Napoleon could better control conscription for the army and enforce more efficient taxation. For these reasons the local authorities, even after Napoleon’s reign, maintained the Napoleonic legislation in the formerly occupied territories.

During that time period sons began taking and keeping the surname of their father, rather than changing their surname to correspond to the place where they lived.  Through this new naming process, the name “te Selle” became an official family surname name for the first time, and was henceforth included in the government records of civil registration.  As a result, nowhere in either The Netherlands or in the United States have we thus far come across people having the “te Selle” (“TeSelle”) family name who cannot be traced back through the Te Selle family tree to Hermen Wijggers te Selle.

If your name is TeSelle, or you have a TeSelle ancestor, please visit the Genealogy section of this website to see if you can find where you and your ancestors fit into the TeSelle family tree.

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