GGRWHC Board of Directors
Mary Seeger, Jo Ellyn Clarey
Co-Presidents
Susan Coombes
Vice-president
Connie Ingham
Treasurer
Ruth VanStee
Secretary
Newsletter editor
Jo Ellyn Clarey
Kyle Irwin
Mary Seeger
Ruth Stevens
Amy Dunham Strand
Julie Tabberer
Kate van Liere
Ruth Van Stee
Deirdre Toeller-Novak
Webmistress
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Women's History Month 2017!
You'll be hearing from us weekly this month, and our website (www.ggrwhc.org) will be updated regularly. Keep checking! Now scroll down and start marking your calendars for Women's History Month. See you soon-we hope starting this Saturday!
Find the Midwife!
Discovering Midwives in Online
and Offline Records
by Janet Sjaarda Sheeres
Saturday, March 4th, 1:30 pm
Grand Rapids Public Library
On Saturday, March 4th,
Janet Sjaarda Sheeres
will build on her January program at
History Detectives
with a workshop for the Western Michigan Genealogical Society.
To date, Janet has located over forty-five immigrant midwives who served in Dutch colonies across the United States. She will use her findings to aid in the discovery of midwives from other early ethnic communities and share practical research tips to overcome the difficulties of finding these women who were often sidelined in early historical and census records. Click here for information at
WMGS
.
An independent scholar and author, Janet Sjaarda Sheeres is also associate editor of
Origins, the the journal of the Calvin College Archives. Since she began writing thirty years ago, she has published over 70 articles in national and international journals. Her biography,
Son of Secession: Douwe J. Vander Werp, was published by Eerdmans in 2006;
The Not-So Promised Paradise: The Dutch Colony in Amelia, Virginia 1868-1880, in 2013; and her edited and annotated synodical minutes of the Christian Reformed Church from 1857 to 1880, in 2014. There is actually some humor in the latter!
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See the March issue of
Grand Rapids Magazine
for a fine article on researching family origins. Janet Sheeres's March 4
th
program will add a resource not mentioned: midwives' records! Who thinks of those, any more than they consider "who delivered the babies"?! The article also includes nice photos of GGRWHC member Nan Schichtel, board member Julie Tabberer, and recent program presenter Will Miner!
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March 29th
Annual Reception and Program
Before and Beyond the Bricks and Mortar:
The 1908 Blodgett Home for Children and the
Programs It Has Housed
by Cindy Laug & Diana Barrett
ICCF Assembly Hall, 920 Cherry Street SE
We will honor the nineteenth-century women's organizations that created and managed the children's programs behind the construction in 1908 of the Blodgett Home--currently the ICCF, our host building for the day. Guided by local historians Cindy Laug and Diana Barrett, we will see how those programs proliferated in the twentieth century and led to Mary Free Bed taking over the building for rehabilitation projects.
Appropriately, our event on March 29th will offer an opportunity to visit a building beautifully rehabilitated itself. There we will toast the recent 125th anniversary of the Mary Free Bed Guild, whose members in 2016 were inducted into the Michigan Women's Hall of Fame. Free admission and free parking. Please join us, but please reserve: 616-574-7307 or info@ggrwhc.org.
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Please click the "Forward to a Friend" button at the top of this newsletter. If you have received this as a forward, click on the "Join Our Mailing List" button in the left column and receive the next newsletter directly from us.
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Join us or Update your Membership! |
Not a current member of GGRWHC?
Register or renew your membership and
help offset the expenses associated with annual research and programs. Your membership helps to set the record straight on the women who've made history here in our community.
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Board meetings are held on the second Wednesday of the month at 4:30 p.m. in the Vanderveen Center for the Book at the Grand Rapids Public Library. If you have suggestions for programs, oral histories, or other items, please
email us
or plan to attend a meeting.
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