A little more about Stewart VanVliet

In my last post, I told you about an ancestor on my wife's side.  Well, I couldn't just let it end there, I had to find more.  The man was intriguing to me.  So I went to the Monmouth County Library and looked for an obituary in the Asbury Park Press on microfilm.  Sure enough, I found one:

It's a little blurry, but microfilm is tough.  I believe his father was a newspaper man, wrote some kind of fishing column for a local paper, but the Asbury Park Press can't spell his name right.  The proper spelling is VanVliet.  The obituary was found among  several pages of obits, for local people killed in the same crash.  I can see that he was married to Dorothy Smith VanVliet and has two children, Stewart and Lida.  He remained involved with the Boy Scouts, which is how I came upon him in the first place, and was active in the YMCA.  I also see that he was a veteran of World War II, and a communicant of Christ Church in Shrewsbury.  I found these headstones in the church cemetery:

Top left is his headstone, middle left is his father, and the bottom is his mother.  The one on the right is the stone for the family plot.  His sister and her husband are both buried here too, but I don't see a stone for his wife.  She may be with him, but there is no stone for her.  The picture is an experiment of an app that my kids showed me.  I could never do this myself.  Interesting to note is that both his sister, Ortrude and her husband were WWII veterans - the whole family got into the act.  In case you are wondering the round disk in front of his headstone is a flag holder and the disk is from the Shrewsbury Volunteer Fire Department, I found that a lot of the VanVliets served on the Fire Department.  Pretty community minded group

Anyway, after entering the correct date of death in my database, I checked Ancestry.com for any final info.  I got the census records for 1930 and 1940 (before he married) but then I got another military form:

It is an application for a military headstone or marker.  His widow, her signature is at the bottom right, chose the upright marble headstone.  The application gives some good information: rank 1rst Lt, his unit and company, date of birth and date of death.  I found it interesting that the only address I found anywhere is Sycamore Ave, Shrewsbury - no house number.  Maybe it was the only house on the street back then, I don't know.  I do know that the family was very prominent in the Shrewsbury area.  My wife's 2nd great grandfather was a Major General in the Union Army (he was also Stewart VanVliet - I guess it wasn't just my family that recycled first names).  One day I went into the Shrewsbury Historical Society to see what they had there, and I was met by an older man who volunteered there.  I told him that I was doing a family tree and my wife's family was from Shrewsbury.  He asked what her maiden name was and when I told him VanVliet, I thought he was gonna die. He asked if she was related to the general and when I said yes, I reached some sort of celebrity status.  He showed me a book shelf dedicated to Gen. VanVliet, which included old ledgers and papers.  In a box there were assorted birth and marriage certificates, as well as, old letters.  He let me copy whatever I wanted and was extremely helpful.  So I have to be careful writing about my wife's VanVliet family, cause once I start - I'll have to quit my job and just blog to dedicate the time needed for all the info I can find quickly.  I'm gonna keep looking for a Brady Museum, but I just don't think it's in the cards.