Stewart VanVliet

Yes you read it right - can't complain about the Irish with this one.  Stewart is one of my wife's ancestors who lived in Shrewsbury, NJ and is my father-in-law's (second?) cousin.  I would have to start a whole blog to cover my wife's family - especially on her father's side.  They consist of numerous West Pointers, including at least two generals and three burials in Arlington National Cemetery that I know of.  But this was kind of a local story that I happened upon by accident the other day.  I thought it was interesting - so I'm throwing it into the mix.

On Wednesday, I was working in the Shrewsbury area, and needed to use a rest room.  So I went to the Shrewsbury municipal building to use the facility.  When I walked through the lobby, I noticed two or three plaques on the wall put up by the local Boy Scout Troop.  The plaque had names of Eagle Scouts in the local Troop.  On my way out, I was looking through the names and when I got to the first name on the first plaque, I was surprised to see Stewart VanVliet and the date Aug 16, 1935.  So apparently he was the first Eagle Scout in Troop 50:

It's tough to see, so I took another picture:

There - that's better.  Top left on the plaque.  So I called my wife to tell her about  my find.  She really doesn't get as excited about this kind of stuff as I do - but actually there are very few people that get as excited as I do about this stuff.

When I got home, I went on Ancestry to check and see how old he was, where he lived in Shrewsbury, and who his father was, etc... Turns out that he is a junior, his father is also Stewart. Our Eagle Scout was born in 1920 - so he was only 15 when he made Eagle Scout, which is impressive (I think) maybe it was different back then.  So I checked my family tree program and saw that he died in 1950, and I was actually saddened by that - thinking of the promising future  that he never had.  It was at this point that I vaguely remembered my father-in-law telling me about a relative who was killed in a train wreck.  So my wife gets interested and goes on her ipad and searches for fatal train wrecks in 1950.  The response she gets is a train wreck - which is actually the third worst wreck in the country in terms of lives lost and injuries - in Woodbridge in 1951.  The wreck occurred on 6 Feb 1951, I checked my database again, and I had that Stewart died on 6 Feb 1950.  So I said to her that maybe my info was off by one year, after all that is quite a coincidence.  So I go on my ipad - so now we have dueling ipads going, and I search for the same criteria and I get the same train wreck on a different website.  The website is GenDisasters.com and I find out about this horrific train wreck on 6 Feb 1951 which resulted in 82 deaths and 500 injuries.  I read through the story and at the end is a list of Casualties.  Among the dead is listed Stewart VanVliet, age 30, Sycamore Ave. Shrewsbury, NJ - Holy Cow that's him.  In 2001, New Jersey Transit placed at plaque at the Woodbridge Station:

This is a link to the website and story with some photos and casualty list:  http://www3.gendisasters.com/new-jersey/2163/woodbridge%2C-nj-commuter-train-plunges-trestle%2C-feb-1951

Now for my Paul Harvey imitation: "Now here's the rest of the story"  The day that I found all of this stuff was 6 Feb 2013 - exactly 62 years after his death.  I told the story to my sister, and she asked if I thought it was spooky.  So I told her "No, they call it genealogical serendipity" so she asked if that is really what I would call it.  I told her "No, I call it creepy - but that's what some genealogists would call it."