Family Reunion: Blom

An overview of my work under this surname

Jan 10, 2024

My wife’s paternal grandfather was Bob McCullough, the youngest child of Earl Randolph McCullough and Mary E. Blom. Earl’s father was John Riley McCullough, whom you might recall from the Family Reunion: McCullough post.

Mary Blom’s parents were Bernard Blom (1861–1917) and Ida Slight (1863–1949), who were married in Ackley in 1886, about ten years after Bernard’s family immigrated from the Netherlands. Ida was born in Ackley, but her parents were immigrants from Prussia who had arrived in the U.S. about 1854 and had married in Ogle County, Illinois in 1856.

Bernard was the son of Bernard Blom (b. 1829) and Anna Maria Heijting (1832–1916), born on 30 Jun 1861 in Angerlo, Zevenaar, Gelderland, Netherlands. Both Bernards worked as carpenters or cabinetmakers - in fact, most of the Blom men seemed to follow that trade, both in the U.S. and in Holland. If you get a chance to dig up their Dutch records, you will see the occupation “Timmerman” on many of their documents! So far, I have only traced back as far as the elder Bernard’s parents, Jan Blom (1792–1859) and Aaltje Slotboom (1793–1860).

We don’t know when the elder Bernard died, but he appeared on the 1910 U.S. Federal Census and Maria was listed as “widowed” in the 1915 Iowa State Census. She lived alone in a house near that of her son, George, and she died in a fire that consumed her house in March 1916. George was grief-stricken by the loss of his mother and he took his own life in May 1916 because, according to the note he left behind, he couldn’t stand being confronted by the charred reminder of her ruined house every morning when he woke up.

The younger Bernard died a year later, in May 1917, when the limb from a tree he was trimming struck him in the abdomen. He was survived by four brothers and two sisters, as well as his wife and four daughters.

Mightier Acorns

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