During a recent interview, Peter Van Miert opened one of several loose-leaf binders he keeps on a shelf near his kitchen. Inside this binder were a number of plastic-covered pages that stored a variety of papers. Some of the binders contained post cards, meticulously collected over the years – post cards so rare that museums would pay to have them in their collections.
Other binders, however, contained documents equally rare but much more personal, documents of little value except to Peter and his wife, Edith, who have spent well over a decade gathering them.
These pages contained the secrets to their past: the names, dates and important events that marked their family history over several centuries, tracing trails that went back to Holland and to Czechoslovakia.
Although both Peter and Edith have long maintained an interest in the past, their own family history as well as the history of the area – especially the docks of Hoboken – they didn’t have time to pursue their pastime until after they retired in the late 1980s. Since then, they have traveled twice to Europe as well as all over the metropolitan area, delving into their family’s secrets as well as into the bins of yard sales and flea markets.
In many ways, the Van Mierts are a remarkable couple. Married for 53 years, they seem as energetic as teenagers. Both, however, are nearly 80 years old, and the pursuit of the past is only one of many projects the two have taken on, from expanding their porch into a room to painting the interior of their house.
“We do everything together,” Edith said
A visitor to their home, however, can expect at least a short trip through time, as Peter pulls out his these notebooks full of post cards, and Edith pulls out an equal number with papers documenting the long history of her family.
History
As close as they are, the Van Mierts hardly knew each other as teenagers, even though they were born within hours of each other and lived most of their early lives within 10 blocks of each other in Union City. Both graduated the same year from Emerson High School in 1942.
During World War II, Peter served overseas, helping to distribute mail; Edith served as a kind of USO girl at the Weehawken Elks. Soldiers couldn’t date her, but they could come to the lodge where she would have dinner with them and dance, part of the homefront’s effort to keep up morale.
Peter, who said the couple has lived in Secaucus since 1954, met Edith again after the war when he applied for a job as a production mechanic at the Yardley factory of Palisades Avenue in Union City. Edith was a secretary there. The rest, as they say, was history.
Started looking in 1987
Edith said she always wanted to find out where she came from. She wanted to look into how her family came to the United States, but could not with working. So when she and Peter retired in 1987, they started their search. While they both found treasures in records overseas, Edith found her search much more difficult. Peter’s family came from Holland where the government kept good records. Edith’s family came from Czechoslovakia – behind what was then called “The Iron Curtain.”
To get any kind of document from there, she had to write to U.S. government officials for permission, and any payments she had to make, had to be done through the same office. Yet as difficult as government hostilities made the research, she said she found numerous clues to the past, and eventually, dug up enough information to track her mother’s family back to the 1600s and her father’s side to 1870.
Some of Edith’s investigations took her to local archives, such as the Hoboken Board of Health, where – without knowing how big a treasure it was – she uncovered her mother’s Czechoslovakian marriage certificate on file.
Documents from early in the 20th century tended to have much more information than their more modern equivalent, such as the names of parents of the bride, and listings of several generations of family members beyond that. From clues supplied by that one document, Edith was able to track down other documents, and in a few years, had managed to trace her family back 300 years.
For many years, however, one piece of information eluded Edith. Despite having her mother’s marriage certificate, she could not locate the city in which her mother was born. She wrote numerous letters to Czechoslovakia, and searched through many other documents, but the information did not emerge.
Then one day, a monk from Immaculate Conception Church in Secaucus came over and happened to take an interest in her mother’s marriage certificate, most of which was written in Czechoslovakian. He apparently read as well as spoke Czechoslovakian.
“He happened to remark about the town where my mother was born,” Edith said. “I asked him how he knew, he pointed to the certificate. It was written right there. We had in hanging on our wall the whole time and never knew it.”
Mailing requests
Living relatives provided a remarkable amount of information. By mailing requests to each of their known relatives, Edith and Peter were able to come up with additional names, as well as documents and photographs. One photograph showed a grandmother making cigars with an oil lamp for illumination. They also uncovered enlistment records, honorable discharges, and other information about family members. They found funeral photos taken by a family member who was a professional photographer, and even death certificates and deeds. Edith found out odd facts about relatives she had not known. She discovered, for instance, that her grandfather had purchased a piece of property in New York State. Edith had not met this grandfather. He died before she was born.
“He had bought the land for $60,” she said.
Although they knew grandparents had numerous children, in some cases, neither knew about the children who had no survived to adulthood. Edith also found 200 post cards with messages of love sent by her father to her future mother from Europe.
Both Peter and Edith charted out their family trees.
Since starting their search in 1987, their efforts have been made much easier by access to the Internet. Both have found many sites aiding them, where they can leave messages and get answers from other people with similar interests.
Following the historic trail
Peter started delving into his past by searching out the ship’s manifests for information on his father. Often a search for immigrant parents starts with search of passenger lists, and ship manifests. It helps to have a person’s passport because it supplies a lot of information, Peter said.
But Peter, like Edith, used every possible source of information, including census data, for clues to keep him on the right trail.
One problem for researchers looking for relatives who came in before 1889 – when Ellis Island began operations – is that the previous sites did not keep records.
“Many people don’t understand that there were at least three places where immigrants landed,” Edith said. The first reception area for European immigrants was the barge office in New York, the second was the Castle – the fort-like structure in Battery Park used now as a ticket office for day trips to Liberty Island. Few records exist and nearly none related to specific immigrants. Yet through various sources, Edith learned that some of her relatives came across with children. One woman came with two, another with as many as six.
“Can you imagine traveling steerage with six children?” Edith asked.
Peter and Edith have taken two trips to Europe to track down records and perhaps find living relatives.
During their first trip to Holland, Peter hadn’t a clue as to where to start looking for family members. So Edith suggested he look up his name in local telephone book. While the people on the other end were a little uncertain, they agreed to meet Peter and Edith at the hotel.
“Then a man walked into the lobby who looked just like our son,” Edith said.
This began a very fruitful avenue for collecting information, since this person took them to other members of Peter’s family.
One oddity, they discovered while researching burial places of relatives, was the fact that management of cemeteries did not forget old debts, and more than once they have received burial bills for as much as a $1,000 for people several generations back.
“We had to write them back and inform them that beyond second generation, we’re not responsible for the debt,” Edith said.
Post cards came as a sideline
One of the side benefits Pete found as a result of his research was the vast collection of post cards. In fact, of the many thousands he has collected, he has over 800 rare post cards depicting the history of Hudson County’s immigration, its ocean liners and its physical appearance. Nearly all of these were collected via garage sales and flea markets. He said he rarely traveled further than Fairlawn, N.J. to purchase any. Although most of them are extremely rare, he paid as little as 50 cents each.
With the help of a family member, Peter managed to document the great harbor fire in 1900, using a copyrighted story by Robert Gordon and his own collection of rare post cards.
“The disaster happened in July, [and] because of lack of refrigeration, authorities had to pack the bodies in ice,” Peter said., “The eventually brought the bodies to Flower Hill Cemetery in North Bergen and put them in a mass grave.”
The marker is still there with all the names.
Peter said he is working on a project that tells the story of the Titanic and the ships associated with that disaster. Among his collection are post cards depicting the 1934 fire of Morrow Castle in Asbury Park. His vast collection of cards includes numerous scenes from around Hudson County, including such places at Scheutzen Park (when it still had a lake behind it), and other oddities, such as the wagon lift that helped transport wagons up the side of the Palisades. From time to time, he brings this collection to the Secaucus Library so that the general public can look at them. He has also taken tours of local schools displaying his collection of medals and ribbons – all earned in service, and his collection of World War II memorabilia.
Edith, sharing in this part of her husband’s life, has created large oil paintings out of some of Peter’s favorite cards.