Tracing Canadian Vanderport

Back about 15 years ago when my maternal grandmother was clearing out photo albums, prepping for her move into a senior’s care centre, she pulled out a photo of a man and handed it to my aunt. My aunt, her daughter, passed it along to me along with the note that he was grandma’s biological father, a Vanderport, who was Pennsylvania Dutch. Wait! What! I don’t have Braniff genes??? A bit of a shock to find out in my 30s.

Now, here I am this past Christmas, with a couple of family DNA tests attached to my trees (thanks dad for doing AncestryDNA), looking through Canadian records to see just how many Vanderports there were in Saskatchewan about 1918. Not that many, in fact so far I found one border crossing about 1917 through Portal North Dakota of a Peter Vanderport (or Vanderpoel depending on transcriber eyes) who lived in Tribune Saskatchewan.

More digging, a record in the Canadian WW1 CEF personnel records for a Peter Vanderpoel, whose mother Beitsche Segel lived in Tribune.

Long story short, and I’ve recorded what I’ve found so far on Ancestry and FamilySearch, I’ve traced this man, my highly potential great grandfather, from his immigration from Holland through to his death in Washington state. I’ve found records for his biological parents from Holland, his mother’s second marriage and immigration from Holland through to North Dakota, then Saskatchewan with her second husband and 3 sons from her first marriage, raising another 3 children and eventually settling in Washington state. What an adventure!

I haven’t confirmed the relation with DNA at this point, but hoping one of his g.great nephews or nieces will one day submit a test that matches.