Another Sepia Saturday is already upon us! This week brings us a prompt image of a beautiful beach, but unfortunately I have no family that lived on/near beaches or who took and saved photos from a beach vacation. We’re not a beach/shore kind of people, it seems! However, my husband’s family came to the USA from the Netherlands on a boat in 1951 which fits the bill for at least the “sea” part of the theme. On February 13, 1951, the S.S. Volendam departed from Rotterdam, Netherlands, bound for America. Two families who apparently didn’t know eachother prior to the journey, met and became friends on the 12 day journey, or friends enough to take a picture and share it later on. The photo looks like it was taken on board the ship, on their first day according to the inscription on the back. Google Translate tells me the inscription, written in Dutch, says, “To remember the boat trip to America,” and is signed the Jansens Family. I hadn’t heard the name before, they weren’t family friends that I knew of, so I set out to figure out who this Jansens Family was. By luck, they were listed just above my husband’s family on the passenger list (link). My husband’s grandparents are in the back row, 2nd and 3rd in from the left – Hilje “Hilda” Dijkema (1914-1997) and Doede “Douglas” Jaarsma (1911-1995). The head of the Jansens family was Pieter Jansens and his wife, Janna, along with 10 of their 18 children. I recently got in contact with a descendant of Jacobus (the man in the back row on the far left with the camera bag) who filled me in on some details of the family who ended up in Grand Rapids, Michigan. The Jaarsma family went to northern New Jersey and pretty much stayed in the area. It’s sweet that the Jansens family sent along a copy of the photo after arriving at their destination, and that Hilda and Douglas kept it all these years. It was really neat to connect with a descendant of the Jansens family and share the photo back with them, and I’m happy to share it as this Sepia Saturday sails off into the sunset.
They must have been so excited about what lay in the future. And the war years were only just in the past. That group of people sure would have had some stories to tell.
There’s something about shipboard friendships. I met my best friend aboard ship moving to Hawaii. We’ve now been friends for over 56 years. It must have been the salty air that brought us together. Or the fact that were were both little girls of military families heading to the unknown.