Title: Cora Helen Roelofs Verbrugge Collection, 1872-2000
ID: COLL/528
Primary Creator: Cora Helen Roelofs Verbrugge (1918 - 2002)
Extent: 32.0 Boxes
Arrangement: Folder level description
Family historian and genealogist. The collection includes the supporting material of the book, The Life of a Dutch American: George Roelofs, i.e., drafts, photographs, letters, and photocopy images of photographs, plus correspondence, family member information, and research material.
[Note: see also Heritage Hall books The Life of a Dutch American: George Roelofs, 1853-1919, of Zwolle, the Netherlands, and Grand Rapids, Michigan: His Ancestry, Life, and Descendants with Photographs, Maps, and Genealogical Charts by Cora Helen Roelofs Verbrugge (CT274 .R635 V47 1994) and Brieven uit het Verleden: Samenstelling en Redactie door Frank Verbrugge (Letters from the Past: Compiled and Edited by Frank Verbrugge) (CT274 .V47 B75 1981). See also Frank Verbrugge. Papers – collection 529]
Cora Helen Tromp Roelofs (11 Jan 1918 - 09 Jan 2002) was born in Grand Rapids to George (nee Gerrit) Roelofs (1853-1919) and Nellie Tromp (1878-1939). He was a real estate dealer, insurance agent, and editor/publisher of Een Stem des Volks, who had emigrated in 1875. He and his first wife, Mary Dijkema (1857-1912), had five children. In 1913 he and Nellie Tromp married and they had two children, Robert (1914-1985) and Nellie. After George’s death, Nellie married Theodore (nee Tiddo) Wolthorn (1880-1972), whose first wife, Wilhelmina Johnson (1883-1918), had also died.
Cora graduated from Grand Rapids Central High School in 1936 and attended Calvin College, there meeting Frank Verbrugge (1913-1985). The two married in 1940 and in 1946 settled in Northfield, Minnesota, where Frank served on the faculty of Carelton College. In 1956, the family moved to St. Paul when Frank joined the faculty of the University of Minnesota. After helping her husband with his family’s history, Wither Thou Goest: The Life and Story of Jacobus and Maria Verbrugge in Minnesota, she began collecting material about and writing the history of her family, The Life of a Dutch American, George Roelofs, which she finished after Frank died. Frank and Cora had four children—Anne Louise (married Tomas Hughes Martin), Lois Marie (married Elmer Grant Gilbert), Robert Roelofs (married Noreen Elizabeth Hughes), and Martha Helen Verbrugge.
