1908 – 1912

Elizabeth Stuit is my great-great-aunt — an aunt of my grandmother Dina van der Laan. Her untimely death at the age of 23, some 113 years ago, is in the distant past. That, and, being among so many in that generation of my ancestors, should relegate her to the fringes of who I am. Yet she stands out and speaks to me still, today.

I have a living connection to Elizabeth through my grandmother, whom I knew well for forty years. She knew Elizabeth from her own birth in 1905 to Elizabeth’s death seven years later. During those times both of Elizabeth’s parents and two siblings died, and three siblings left for America, to be followed later by three more.

Stientje Stuit, Elizabeth’s oldest sister (and my great grandmother) lived far from her family (by the standard of those days) and they kept up by correspondence. The resulting exchange of letters, detailing the drama of life and death among the Stuits in the Stutenstreek, were treasured and passed along among her sisters Stientje, Trijn and Ena, then later to Stientje’s daughter Dina, and then to Dina’s daughter Stiny.

In the last year’s of Oma’s life at Holland Christian Homes, Stientje’s namesake and granddaughter Stiny de Jong translated these letters and compiled them into a little, twenty-eight page booklet for distribution among family members. My copy came to me in June of 1994. I made it available in PDF format a few years ago, but now have committed it to this text-searchable and and mobile-friendly format.

The first three chapters are excerpted from Henk Bousema’s monumental “Stuit Family History” (324 pages) published in 1996, and set the stage for the events of 1908 to 1912. I don’t think the formative impact of these events, so long ago, should be underestimated. They lie at the root of our van der Laan clan.

Henry de Jong, February, 2025