The Cornelius Van Laarhoven Family Homestead In Montana is an extensive history of the Van Laarhoven's genealogy. The Book contains pictures and documents with captions, and covers a number of families across numerous generations, including while homesteading in Montana.

The following links are to The Cornelius Van Laarhoven Family Homestead In Montana.

Backstory

My name is Lawrence Reinhold. Mom always spoke about her father’s family, the Van Laarhoven family. My mother's sister, La Verne (Van Laarhoven) Zastrow did a lot of research on the Van Laarhoven family, (Mom’s father’s side of the family), but her work was not written up until I included the information in The Cornelius Van Laarhoven Family Homestead In Montana. We knew a lot about that family and our relatives in Holland. Mom's father, his parents, and his brothers immigrated from Holland in 1911. We also heard a lot about the Rothamer family, my mother’s maternal side of the family. The Rothamer and Kummer family lines are related to the Van Laarhoven family.  The Rothamer family immigrated from Germany in 1891. Of course, when Mom spoke of these families, there was nothing but praise both in her tone of voice and the words she used to describe the families—hard workers, no drinking, good Catholics, endured hardships, and so on.

One of the most interesting aspects of The Cornelius Van Laarhoven Family Homestead In Montana was obtaining the information from Montana. Mom and La Verne, spoke of their father’s activities as a cowboy in Montana. Mom and her sister, La Verne, spoke of their father’s activities as a cowboy in Montana. They spoke of their father and grandfather (Cornelius) living in Montana, but not where or why. They also spoke of the Van Laarhoven brothers running a herd of horses through Medford’s downtown area, which the Van Laarhoven brothers brought by train from Montana. One day, on a whim, I searched the federal homestead database. The government data base had only recently become available through the Internet. I had no expectation of finding anything, but to my absolute shock, three of the Van Laarhoven names showed up as having homestead filings. Mom and La Verne never spoke of the Van Laarhovens’ homesteading in Montana, so I could not believe what I saw. I thought the homestead information was associated with other individuals, but I requested the documents anyway. There was no mistaking who the documents related to once I read through them. All the documents I requested are contained in Chapter Two of The Cornelius Van Laarhoven Family Homestead In Montana. Finding this material was the highlight of all my Van Laarhoven family research.