Gertruida's House

My eldest son, A-2, is in Amsterdam for work. That's Nike-Europe HQ. On video talk with his family Sunday night, we talked about him going to the Netherlands. My Granddaughters thought he was going to "Neverland."

I remembered late last night that I had told him I would send the info on where my 2nd-Great-Grandmother, Gertruida ter Bruggen was born in 1859. I had it plotted on Google Maps from the Dutch census information. I awoke this morning to his email with pics from his visit there!

Gertruida is the one who bore a striking resemblance to my second daughter, A-4. There is that surprising connection and the fact that I knew her daughter, my Great Grandmother, Maria Mourina Roman Wheelwright (1883-1972). Her middle name, Mourina, is from her Dutch family. When I was very young, she would lovingly tease me with two, porcelain kissing dolls, a little Dutch boy and girl. She would hold the Dutch boy and say it was me and in her other hand, the Dutch girl was my girlfriend. Those were sweet hands.

My son took these pictures this morning at 282 Bloemstraat, 1016 LK, Amsterdam:

This is obviously a new building. With the same street configuration on the canals, the ter Bruggens had a little store on the ground level of this corner. They lived above which is where Gertruida would have been born.

Here you can see that they were right on the canal:

It's nice to see that some of our people came from such a beautiful place!

Finally, two street views looking up both diagonals of the sharp corner:

I emailed back to my son that he had brought tears to my eyes first thing this morning.