My name is Esther Vlietstra, I live on the farm you talked about, I have a family tree that was done in Netherlands by Hanke Troost, who is a relative of Gertrude Luscombe, who is my cousin, she is a daughter to John & Susie Vlietstra. Susie just passed away at 100 years old, last summer. John Vlietstra is a cousin to my dad and your grandpa, Fred Sr, & Martin Vliettra, your grandpa also had a brother John, all together were 6 John Vlietstra's, My mom and Dad had a picture of all the John Vlietstra's on their 25th wedding anniversary. I found out that in the Netherlands, children were named after parents, so you end up with many generations having the same first names. It gets very confusing especially in big families where there are Many Aunts, Uncles, Cousins, etc. and you could skip a generation and not even know it (like I did) Hope this helps, if you need more info just email me, I did find out about the Modderman family and also how they met. They probably met on the boat, but after they went their seperate ways, The Modderman's in Kalamazoo, and Grandpa Henry Vlietstra went to Iowa, their was a love affair going on at that point, Grandpa Henry Vlietstra moved from Iowa to Kalamazoo after several letters were exdhanged between the two of them. I asked your Aunt Eleanor Kuiper about how my grandparents met, if you should ever hear that story, that is not true, parts of it might be true, but I think it was very embellished. When I asked your aunt about it, that was before I viewed a videotape of my sister interviewing my Dad about the family history, and he said absolutlety nothing about what your aunt said, when I viewed the videotape, that's when I learned of the love affair and Iowa connection. My email is
acescorner@Chartermi.net although I don't respond to this email account very much, because I use this email account for sending the church bullitens and Church newsletter, Second Thoughts, to missionairies of our church. I do have another email account that I use more frequently, it's
acescorner@juno.com although I get pretty busy with farm work and being a caregiver to my mom, I don't answer or respond to my email that quickly, it might take a while to answer you back. Esther Vlietstra