About this website

Hi! We're the Ver Mulms - Denny and Martha. We're Iowa natives and the descendants of European immigrants. All my ancestors emigrated from the Netherlands to Iowa in the years between 1865 and 1902. Growing up, I never thought about them very much. That was also true for Martha whose ancestors came to America from Norway, Germany, and England between 1630 and 1857. On a trip to New York City some years ago, we visited the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island. We didn't find much information on our ancestors, and that didn't surprise us. Ellis Island didn't open for business until 1892. The dearth of information about our ancestors sent us off on a decade-long quest to learn more. Eight U.S. states, two foreign countries, hundreds of hours of on-line research, and countless cemetery crawls later, we finally have some answers. Not surprisingly, mysteries and questions still remain. The accuracy of some of my findings is uncertain. Old records, both public and family ones, are often in disagreement with each other where such things as name spellings and birth, death, and wedding dates are concerned. These conflicting records make it impossible to say with 100% certainty what is right and what is wrong. Add to this the difficulty of deciphering a 100-200 year-old hand-written record in Dutch, Norwegian, or German language, and the hurdles become all too clear. All this is a fancy way of saying that genealogical research is often as much an art as it is a science. I've done my best to make sure my conclusions are accurate, but if you find errors or mistakes, please know that they are unintentional. In spite of any uncertainty, we finally have a much better picture of those who brought our family names to the New World. We've assembled all our discoveries in a 262-page book titled To Every Man His Chance. A PDF version of the book is on this website. It's been divided into individual family chapters, and we're using the website as a vehicle to share our discoveries with family wherever they may be. We hope you enjoy! If you have questions or comments, please feel free to email them to us at this email address.
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research acknowledgments

A variety of on-line resources were available to me, and the ones listed below might be of assistance to others wishing to do their own genealogical research. The databases and family information at Ancestry.com The databases and information at EllisIsland.org The databases and information at the Rotterdam, Netherlands City Archives at stadsarchief.rotterdam.nl The databases and information at the Gelderland, Netherlands Provincial Archives at geldersarchief.nl The databases and information at the Friesland, Netherlands Provincial Archives at allefriezen.nl The comprehensive archive system for The Netherlands at Family Search The Netherlands genealogical databases at WieWasWie.nl The church and civil databases for the country of Norway at Arkivverket.no The databases and information at the Canadian Immigration Archives at Library-Archives.canada.ca The various state and county genealogy websites available at the US GenWeb project In addition to the on-line resources listed above, I need to acknowledge a variety of print publications and the invaluable contribution of countless people who have contributed to this project by helping to locate obscure documents, provide valuable insight, photos, and family memorabilia. I didn't do this alone, so thanks to everyone! See the end of the book for a complete list of acknowledgements.
This website copyright Dennis Ver Mulm © 2025. Any of the photos or documents found hereon may be freely used provided proper attribution is given to the copyright holder.