The Green line represents my great, great, great grandfather Gerard who came to the Dutch East Indies, where his son was born, and the second green line represents his return back to the Netherlands where he would pass away. His son, John was born in the Dutch East Indies and died there and is represented by the black circle. The Brown Line represents my great grandfather who was born in the Dutch East Indies and passed away in Alexandria, Louisiana. The Red line represents my grandfather, Robert, who was born in the Dutch East Indies and is now living in Oak Grove, Mississippi. The blue line represents my father, Ryan, who was born in New Orleans and now lives in Oak Grove. The Yellow Circle represents myself; I was born in Hattiesburg, and I now live in Oak Grove.
This family migration map and narrative shows six generations, including myself, of my family and where they were born, where they died, and how they got from those two points. The main push factor that caused my family to move from the Netherlands to the Dutch East Indies was religious reasons. They left the country due to the problems between the Protestants and the Catholics. The de Gruiters were the protestants and had split in the past from the Catholic side of the family, which was the de Gruyters. After World War Two and when Indonesia became independent, my family eventually moved back to Europe, then they moved to the United States, which brought me to Lamar County, Mississippi.
My great, great, great grandfather was Gerard de Gruiter. He was born in the Netherlands in South Holland on December Eighth, 1861, and he passed away on June Fourth, 1905, in the Netherlands. I do not know much about him, but his son John was born in the Dutch East Indies. This means that Gerard left the Netherlands at some point before John was born because of the religious problems going on and went to the Dutch East Indies where his son was born, but for some reason Gerard returned to the Netherlands where he passed away. John Frederick de Gruiter is my great, great grandfather and was born either in the year 1887 or 1888 in the Dutch East Indies. Unlike his father who returned to Holland, John stayed and passed away in the Dutch East Indies. During the second world war, John, along with others in the family, was taken prisoner by the Japanese during the Japanese Island-Hopping Campaign in the Pacific. John spent the rest of the war in the prison camp and was released when the war ended, but he died a year later due to his sickness he had got from the prison camp. His son Gerard de Gruiter, my great grandfather, was born on August Nineteenth, 1926, in the Dutch East Indies. He was born on the eastern side of the island of Java. He passed away in 2016 in Alexandria, Louisiana. He stayed in the Dutch East Indies/Indonesia until 1956. During the second world war, he was also captured and taken prisoner by the Japanese, along with all of his brothers. He was put in a camp with one of his brothers because they were both younger and were not put into work camps, until he was a little older. Then he worked in the labor camps building railroads for the Japanese. After the war, he was the manager of a rubber plantation that had over a thousand people working on it. After the war Indonesian leaders declared independence, but the Dutch wanted to reclaim its land that was occupied by the Japanese, and they did not recognize their independence till 1949, and in 1956 relations between the Dutch and the Indonesian governments broke down and the Dutch citizens in Indonesia faced forced migration. Most went back to the Netherlands. My great grandfather left with his family in 1956. He went to the Netherlands where some of his relatives lived. He spent six years there. He decided to move to the United States, and it took a while before he could move. The push factors which caused him to want to emigrate were economical. After over a million people came to the Netherlands after having to leave Indonesia, there was tough competition for things like jobs and homes. After six years in Europe, Gerard and the family moved to Oklahoma because a farmer and a teacher there had sponsored their immigration. He stayed in Oklahoma for six months. Then he decided to move to New Orleans, Louisiana where his friend Rudy lived. He stayed in New Orleans until Hurricane Katrina hit in 2005. Then he and his wife, Anita, moved to Alexandria with their daughter Helen. By this time, he was coming into his eighties. Anita, who was born in 1932, passed away in 2007. Gerard passed away in 2016 at the age of eighty-nine. Gerard and Anita had my grandfather Robert James de Gruiter on July Fourth, 1948. Robert was born in central Java. He grew up on the plantation with his two brothers Jerry and Steve and his sister Helen. He spent only the first two years of grade school in Indonesia. They left in 1956 to the Netherlands. During his six years there, Robert went through most of grade school. When he came to the United States with his family, through Ellis Island, they went to Oklahoma where he spent six months attending school and living on a farm. Then they moved to New Orleans. This is where he graduated high school and started college at Louisiana State University. Then halfway through college, he got drafted into the army during Vietnam, but he ended up going to Germany because he could speak German and Dutch. Stacey, his first daughter, was born in Germany. After four years he came back to Louisiana and finished his last two years of college at Loyola University in New Orleans. At New Orleans his two sons Steven and Ryan were born. After he graduated from college, he rejoined the army, which he stayed in until the end of The Gulf War. After he rejoined the army he went back to Germany, where Adrienne, his daughter, was born. After he left Germany, he returned back to the United States where he moved around the country on different military bases. He went to places on the East Coast, West Coast, Texas, Kentucky, Alaska, and other places. While he was in the army, he came to Camp Shelby, and he liked the area. He and his wife Trudy moved to Oak Grove. He went to Kuwait during the Gulf War, and he retired from the army soon after. Later he began working on the oil rigs in the Gulf and in South America for Halliburton. He worked on the oil rigs until 2011, which was just a little after the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Now he is still living in Oak Grove, Mississippi. Robert and Trudy had my father, Ryan James de Gruiter on June Twenty-eighth, 1978, in New Orleans, Louisiana. He moved around a lot during his childhood when my grandfather was in the army. He spent his early years of grade school at a bunch of different schools and military bases. He moved to Oak Grove at the end of middle school. He graduated Oak Grove in 1997, which was a year later than he should have because of a car accident he was in which caused him to miss too much of his classes. After that he went to the University of Southern Mississippi. Ryan and his wife Crystal, my mother, had their first child, me, on December 6, 2000. In 2001, he moved to the city of D'Iberville on the Coast. In D'Iberville, my parents, myself, my aunt, my cousin, and my mother's grandmother all lived in one house with my grandparents on my mother's side. After a year my parents left and bought their own house in D'Iberville. We stayed in the same house for a couple of years. In 2005, Hurricane Katrina hit and flooded the house with eight feet of water. During the storm, he decided to go to Oak Grove to my grandparent's house, Robert and Trudy, to wait out the storm. After Katrina, we left and went back to Oak Grove and stayed in the same house until 2012. In 2012, a tornado came to Hattiesburg and hit our house. My parents moved from Oak Grove to Hattiesburg, then back to Oak Grove in 2017, where they are living now. I am the last of the six generations in this family migration. I, Gavin James de Gruiter, was born at Wesley Hospital in Hattiesburg Mississippi, on December 6, 2000. My parents moved to D'Iberville where I finished Kindergarten and First Grade. After Hurricane Katrina, we moved back to Oak Grove. We stayed there for seven years until the tornado hit in 2012, and then we moved to Hattiesburg for five years. Then we moved back to Oak Grove. During the time we lived in Oak Grove and Hattiesburg, I always went to school at Purvis because my mother teaches at Purvis, so my brothers and I have always gone to school there. I started at Purvis in Second Grade, and I graduated from Purvis High in the year 2019. After high school, I began going to the University of Southern Mississippi, and I will finish college in May 2023. Right now, I live in Oak Grove which is in Lamar County.
This map and narrative show how and why my family, in the last six generations, has migrated over time. It shows the migration to the Netherlands to the Dutch East Indies/Indonesia then back to the Netherlands and the United States. This shows how I ended up living in Oak Grove which is in Lamar County, Mississippi.
de Gruiter, Robert. September 11, 2022. Grandfather.
de Gruiter, Trudy. September 11, 2022. Grandmother.
FREEMAPSWORLD.NET, Accessed September 11, 2022. Free printable world maps (freeworldmaps.net).
Comments