Parentage: Folkert Teunis Folkers was born 12 Jan 1859 in Groningen, Netherlands. He was the oldest of six children—four boys and two girls—born to Teunis Folkers and Foekje Severien. The father, Teunis, was a ship’s captain and his ship was lost in the North Sea of the Atlantic Ocean on 23 September 1870 just one month short of being 40 years of age. Foekje died just less than four years later, being only 40 years of age. This left the six children ranging in ages from almost 5 years old to 15 years old as orphans.
Hilje Mulder was born 6 May 1856 in the village of Aduard, Groningen, Netherlands. She was the second daughter of six children—four girls and two boys (two of whom died at the age of two years) –born to Hendrik Mulder and Foktje Kloosterman. Hendrik was a common laborer and he died on 5 February 1871 in Niebert, just two and one-half months before his youngest daughter was born. Foktje died in the seventh-fifth year of her age in Groningen, Groningen, Netherlands.
Occupations and Marriage: Sometime in the 1870s, Folkert went to live with Bentie Jans Mulder, a vegetable farmer in Groningen where he lived until his marriage. He may have visited his siblings at the “Groene” [Green] Orphanage as often as possible. Hilje was living with a “cow milker”, or dairy farmer in 1872, delivering milk by carrying it on a yoke over her shoulders, and later worked as a housekeeper for a well-to-do family in Groningen. Somehow, she and Folkert met, perhaps at the orphanage, and on 7 May 1885, they were married in Groningen City.
During the period of 1890 to around 1905, Folkert was a policeman for the City of Groningen. It has been said that he had little sympathy for intoxicated persons and would often throw them into the canals to sober them up. At the time he joined the police force, he had been a “cow milker” according to a record at the police department. Later in the first decade of 1900, Folkert and Hilje worked for the City of Groningen as caretakers of the homeless shelter on Peizerweg, some distance outside the city at that time.
During this time, their second daughter Henderika had moved to be with her Aunt Hendriktje and Uncle Hermanus Thiessens where she worked in the city. Here she met the LDS (Mormon) Missionaries. When she came home, she left tracts (pamphlets) where her mother would see them. She joined the church on 29 February 1908 and two weeks later, her mother and two sisters also joined.
Henderika tells of her father’s conversion and baptism about two years after her own conversion.
Folkert received a pension from Groningen city police and with that and his earnings as custodian of the homeless shelter, he and Hilje were able to save sufficient (with the help of their daughters who had emigrated to the United States before them) they could not immigrate from Holland. On 5 May 1922, they officially notified the authorities there that they would be emigrating to the United States. They left from Rotterdam on SS Ryndam on 7 June 1922. After sailing across the Atlantic Ocean for eleven days, they arrived at Ellis Island on 18 June 1922.
]A historical video tells of arrivals at Ellis Island and what that involved for the many who immigrated to the United States during the time that port was open.
The ship’s photo, description and passenger entry for Folkert T. Folkers PDF can be downloaded here: