This week’s Sepia Saturday featured a photo of two people kissing in front of a crowd of people. Wouldn’t you know it, I don’t have a single sepia photo of people kissing! So, I went with the crowd and decided to explore a pretty well documented event in my husband’s family. On June 2, 1954, Pietertje de Boer (my husband’s great-grandmother), boarded the Maasdam at Rotterdam, Netherlands and departed for the USA. She arrived June 11th, 1954 and was greeted by her family seen in the photo above, and there’s a ship’s manifest to verify her visit. Pietertje is the woman second from the left, and the person taking the photo was likely Hilje (Dijkema) Jaarsma, her daughter-in-law, in Hoboken, New Jersey which was part of the Port of New York. There was a Holland America Line pier at Hoboken, so that’s likely the place she arrived.
From more passenger manifests, we know she departed on April 7, 1955 on the Ryndam after having spent almost a year with family in the USA and thankfully there are photos of that too. In the photo on the left, Pietertje is the woman standing on the far left. The photo on the right is of the Ryndam, ready to pick up passengers and depart the New York harbor.
Now back to that theme! On the left is a photo of the crowd of passengers waving goodbye to their loved ones from the ship, the Ryndam. On the right is a closer view of the ship showing Pietertje at the railing – she’s in the 3rd full window from the right. It’s really amazing to have these as a set to show her arriving and leaving. She had three children who left home in the Netherlands to go to the USA, so she probably made time to visit all three during her stay. Pietertje died just a few years after returning home on 13 February 1957. Her husband, Douwe Jaarsma, had passed away on 21 November 1940, so she presumably made the journey by herself as a 70-year-old woman.
