Jan “John” Albert Loomans was born on May 27, 1829 in Winterswijk, Netherlands and died on July 30, 1897 in Alto, Wisconsin, USA. He was the sixth child born to Jan Willem Lomans and Willemina Oonk.

Coming of Age

Jan Albert spent the majority of his childhood in Winterswijk where he likely assisted his parents on their farmland in the Meddo. Around his fifteenth birthday, in 1844, his entire family packed their few belongings and left for Rotterdam where they would travel the next two years before arriving in Alto Township, Wisconsin. By the time they settled on a small plat of land in their new country, Jan Albert was 17 years old and ready to take increasing responsibility on the farm.

Given his age, Jan Albert took ownership of the family’s purchased property on the current corner of Lake Maria and Oak Grove Roads in Alto. His older brother Abraham purchased adjacent land while the other siblings fanned out to the surrounding area over the subsequent years.

Jan Albert, barely mature in the eyes of modern law, immediately contributed to the welfare of his family, and soon set eyes on starting his own. Records of the land purchase from Alto Township and Fond du Lac County reveal that the plat occupied by the current address of N3160 Oak Grove Road was first bought by J. Loomans in 1846. The family was likely one of the first to purchase land in the area given their relatively premature migration to the Alto area. Jan Albert and likely some of his younger siblings helped their parents prepare and tend the land, gradually cultivating it to 80 acres by 1870.

Marriage & Young Adulthood

Partway into his twenty-second birthday, on November 22, 1851, Jan Albert married Jacoba Hendrika (Catharine) Lammers, an immigrant from Dinxperlo, a municipality just 13 miles southwest of Winterswijk also in the Gelderland province.

A few years younger than her husband, Jacoba was born on February 8, 1833 and was only 18 years old when she married Jan Albert. The couple occupied a small cabin at the edge of the tree line along their property. It is unclear whether the cabin was built prior to their marriage or if it was constructed specifically to house their growing family. 

Jan Albert Loomans, immigrant to a strange land and the soon-to-be father of more than a half-dozen children, would spend the next 40 years of his life maintaining the fields. The age-old profession was the primary skill of his forbearers, but for the first time he would take up the mantle in his family’s new home. Jan Albert’s new life would set the stage for generations to follow, many of his descendants staying close to the confines of the farm he worked so hard to establish during his lifetime. 

As the last Loomans in this line of lineage to be born in the motherland, Jan Albert held an inspiring perspective that now only existed in his memory. He and Jacoba would have 11 children between 1853 and 1872, only one of which died as a newborn (Albert Loomans).

What remains remarkable about their family is that for the first time in the Loomans ancestry, Loomans’ would chart their own path, some away from life on the farm. The children represented a changing tide in their story as an immigrant family—a gradual fulfillment of the dream that likely brought Jan Willem to the United States in the first place a decade earlier. 

Building His Family

The couple’s first child, Jan Willem Loomans, was born on March 29, 1853, with Miena (Amelia) following shortly after on May 27, 1854. Over the next decade, Jacoba gave birth to another six children: Jana (Jane) born on December 26, 1855, Hendrick (Henry) born on May 28, 1857, Johanna (Hannah) born on November 17, 1858, Maria born on July 24, 1861, Albert born on July 24, 1863, and Derrick John born on August 7, 1864.

Fittingly so, the next child born following the death of Hendrick would be given the same name. Hendrick (Henry) John Loomans was born on February 11, 1866, just shy of a year after the elder Hendrick’s death. Now at age 33, Jacoba gave birth to only two others: Anna on April 7, 1867 and Elizabeth on January 4, 1872. All of the children, despite being born over the course of 19 years, were likely born in the family’s cabin. All of these children enjoyed the gift of longevity aside from Hendrick who died for an unknown reason on February 13, 1865 in Alto, Wisconsin and the oldest, Albert.

What remains fascinating when reviewing the name choices of Jan Albert and Jacoba’s children is how the first handful of kids from Jan Willem through Johanna maintained traditional Dutch names (Jan, Jana, Miena, Hendrick, Johanna) that were common in the Netherlands around the time of the family’s departure in the 1840s.

However, over time the names became more recognizable such as Derrick, Anna, and Elizabeth (of course, the names of the older children can be pushed to their equivalent such as is the case with Jana (who likely went as Jane). What this may reveal is the gradual assimilation to their new lives in the United States—a part of their decades-long American transition.

Family Artifact: Birth Certificate of Jan Albert Loomans

A digital copy of Jan Albert’s original birth certificate, the below document was prepared in the Netherlands prior to the family’s departure for the United States in 1844. While written in traditional Dutch, one can spot Jan Albert’s birth date toward the middle of the page and the verification of birth in Winterswijk signed in May 1844 by this authority.

This document is the oldest known original artifact of the Loomans family lineage, nearly 180 years old.