Nebraska Milestones

This month we are feeling motivated and ambitious about adding new stories, photos, and memorabilia to the TeSelle Family website. We hope all of you, and particularly the “Nebraska TeSelles,” will join us on this quest. 
 
August 12, 2019, will mark the 30^thanniversary of the 1989 TeSelle Family Reunion in Lincoln, Nebraska, organized by Norma TeSelle Prophet (1923-2009). [See adjacent image of Norma's Reunion nametag.] If your TeSelle family roots are from Nebraska, there is a good chance that you or one of your relatives was at the Reunion. 
 
Last year on the TeSelle Family website we began adding stories, memorabilia, historical documents, and photos about the lives and families of these three Te Selle brothers. We got much of our material from the work done 30 years ago by Norma TeSelle Prophet for the 1989 TeSelle Family Reunion, which was shared with us by Norma’s daughter, Su Zanna. In the coming months, we plan to add even more memorabilia to the website, not only from the Reunion resources, but also from various historical databases such as Ancestry.com. 
 
In addition, this coming June 22, 2019, marks the 100^thanniversary of the death of Harmen Jan te Selle (1844-1919), one of the three te Selle brothers who emigrated from Winterswijk, Netherlands, to Lancaster County, Nebraska, in the mid-1800s. The other two brothers, Jan Hendrik and Gerrit Jan te Selle died in 1921. 
 
In recognition of the 30^thanniversary of the TeSelle Reunion, as well as the 100^th anniversary of Harmen Jan’s death, we are asking all the descendants of all three Nebraska te Selle brothers, old and young, to share with us their own memories, stories, photos, and other memorabilia about their ancestors, which we will add to the TeSelle Family website. If you have items to share or any other information, please follow this link to contact us. We will send you instructions and a private link where you can upload to us your digital files, photos, scans, and other information or comments.
 
The three te Selle brothers certainly did their fair share to populate Nebraska with Dutch offspring – the three brothers in total had 29 children that survived into adulthood. To refresh your memory about the names and eventual spouses of those 29 children, please follow these links to the Profile pages for each of the brothers, where each of their children is listed:

• Jan Hendrik te Selle (1838-1921) and Hanna Berendina Onnink (1841-1929)
• Gerrit Jan te Selle (1841-1921) and Anna Jonker (1843-1908)
• Harmen Jan te Selle (1844-1919) and (1) Berendina Aleida Ruesink (1841-1876) or (2) Johanna Arnolda Brethouwer (1859-1927)

Hopefully, in addition to the TeSelle name, the married names of the TeSelle offspring will help you connect to your TeSelle ancestor. If you are a TeSelle descendant yourself, or if you know someone who is, please share this TeSelle Family Newsletter with them and ask them to share their memories with us. 
 
Follow the links in the website to see what memorabilia we may already have, and to get ideas of the memorabilia you might be able to share with us. We hope all TeSelle descendants will share a memory or piece of memorabilia with us. The survival of our TeSelle Family history depends upon gathering the stories, photos, and memorabilia from those of us still alive, and making those items available to those family members who may be curious about the family history later, after we are gone. Thanks, in advance, for your help. If you have questions, comments, or information to share, please follow this link to contact us.

Thanks for your interest in the TeSelle Family Newsletter and Website. We are having fun exploring our family history, and we hope you enjoy exploring it with us. We look forward to hearing from you again soon.