The Mystery of H. Poelman

If Flavie’s maiden name was Goens, then who is H. Poelman? Is Octavie her mother? And since H. Poelman is already in Detroit, is it possible he maybe listed on some ship’s manifest from Ellis Island? Are there any other people listed with the last name Goens? Will any of this help to clear up the mystery?

A lot of questions, so off to the Ellis Island web site and a search for H. Poelman. I noticed that the manifest for Octavie says on 3/25/1914, the day she came to Ellis Island, she was 46 years old. My calculator says that she was born around 1868. So I assume her husband would be around the same age so I’m looking for someone born around 1868 and is about 46 years old in 1914 and arrived in America before 1914.

This is kind of interesting. There are 92 names that come up. So I’m going to have to narrow the list down a bit. First I’ll check for Poelman’s from Belgium like Flavie and Octavie. There seems to be a few and they are from Ghent and Ghentbrugge; but no H. Poelman. Ok, then maybe I’ll just make a list of all the Poelman’s that are Belgium.

There are 7 people, including Flavie and Octavie, with the last name of Poelman. The one from Michigan, Emile Poelman, looks promising. I wonder…what about people with the last name of Goens?

There were only 7 people with the last name of Goens I found online and only 2 were from Belgium.

Here’s the list of names I found and the next step is to see if I can find any connections.

Name	From	Arrival Year	Age at Arrival	Year of Birth
Alphonse Poelman	Gand, Belgium	1919	49	1870
Emiel Poelman	Mich. US	1922	40	1882
Flavie Poelman	Ghent, Belgium	1914	21	1893
Henriette Poelman	Gand, Belgium	1919	15	1904
Julie Poelman	Gentbrugge, Belgium	1920	60	1860
Marie Poelman	Ghent, Belgium	1914	30	1884
Octavie Poelman	Ghent, Belgium	1914	46	1868
Jules Goens	Gentbrugge, Belgium	1913	32	1881
Victor Goens	Bissegem, Belgium	1907	21	1886