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Woman still writes to family after 73 years in the U.S.


Tags: Genealogy

CALEDONIA, Michigan - A very surprised Pietje Van Mourik Alberts (82) recently learned from acquaintances that distant family in Friesland, the Netherlands was looking for her and her sisters to renew contact lost in 1976 after the leading letter writer there had died. The acquaintances alerted her to the Windmill Herald when they realized that it was Alberts the family in the old country was looking for. Van Mourik Alberts who immigrated with her parents and her four sisters at age 9, still has regular contact with another branch of her family.

The search through the Windmill Herald was the second one that reached Alberts recently. She just had answered the first request which was published in the Leeuwarder Courant's special Simmer 2000 supplement.

Although contact was lost with some family branches in recent decades, the remaining Van Mourik daughters still correspond with their cousins in the Netherlands. Alberts is quite proud to speak, read and write Dutch although speaking Frisian has her preference. "If I hear Frisian spoken, I always stop to say hi," she said. Which is why she was tipped about the request in the Windmill Herald: she got acquainted with the tipsters when the couple spoke Frisian and Alberts decided to introduce herself to them.