- John Snip, Head, 36 years old, Holland
- Fredericka Snip, Wife, 24 years old, Holland
- Phyllis Snip, Daughter, 6 years old, Portland
Could this family be integrated into our family tree? Naturally, there was a death certificate for Fredericka G Elbert from 1931, married to Heere Snip, born September 7, 1892. These could potentially be the same individuals. A daughter of Heere, Frederika Johanna Snip, was found, according to a death notice and a gravestone in the Netherlands, to have been born on the same day (May 2, 1931) and in the same place (Vancouver). But where had Phyllis Snip gone? After some intensive searching, I got in touch with a daughter of Phyllis named Wendy Cloyd Thorpe through Mundia, and through her, a family tragedy became clear to me.
Jannes (Joseph/Joe) Elbert (1867-1959) arrived in the USA on May 9, 1907, aboard the ship “Rotterdam.” He had his wife, Berendina Catharina Bruggink (1882-1966), and their two children, Berendina Elbert (1903-1985) and Frederika Johanna Elbert (1905-1931), come over on December 11, 1907, aboard the ship “Rijndam.”
When Frederika Johanna was older, she met Einar Martinsen and became pregnant by him. On November 13, 1923, she gave birth to a daughter whom she named Phyllis Wilhelmina. (Wilhelmina is the name of Einar’s mother.) She likely married him because her daughter Phyllis later goes by the name Martinsen, but she was divorced before May 12, 1923. Then she married Alfons van Pamelen, from whom she was again divorced on January 18, 1824.
Frederika married Heere Snip (who also sometimes goes by John) on August 16, 1924, in Multnomah (Oregon), and together they raised Phyllis (Snip), who was not yet a year old at the time. In 1930, Frederika became pregnant again. To give birth, she went to the hospital. Wendy emailed me, telling me that her mother, Phyllis, remembered well that her mother went to the hospital while pregnant and died during the birth of her daughter, Frederika Johanna. Phyllis still sees herself as an 8-year-old girl in the room with her mother’s coffin surrounded by white lilies.
Because Heere couldn’t find work in the USA (due to the Depression), he wanted to return to the Netherlands, along with his daughter Frederika Johanna and his stepdaughter Phyllis, whom he had helped raise and whom he adored. He could get money from a sister for the journey back. However, Phyllis’s grandparents, Jannes and Berendina, did not give their permission. They saw in Phyllis a bit of their beloved daughter Frederika Johanna.
Heere tried for almost two more years to persuade them, but then he returned to the Netherlands with his daughter Frederika. Phyllis was raised by her grandparents. Frederika did not know about the existence of her half-sister until she was around 20 years old.
Heere remarried in the Netherlands to Jacobina de Boer and passed away in 1940.
Phyllis passed away on April 10, 2014, in Salem, Oregon. According to her obituary, she was indeed primarily raised by her grandparents, but during her high school years, she lived with her aunt Berendina Elbert Verhagen and married James Cloyd in 1945.
Text by Paul Snip.
