Left click on the image below for a larger version.
The image above shows the layout of 44th Street and Kalamazoo Avenue as of about 1900, save that the Town & Country shopping area adnd the Shell gas station would not have been there.
Left click on any item below for a much larger version
|
Jacob Noorman - marriage license - 1895. |
Jacob Noorman - citizenship papers - 1896. |
|
The document on the left is the marriage license of Jacob Noorman and Jacoba Bos. In the middle and right is is the citizenship paper of Jacob Noorman, split into two pieces for scanning purposes.
It's not clear exactly when a store first appeared on the northwest corner of 44th Street and Kalamazoo Avenue. The Grand River Valley Railroad began operation on January 1, 1870. Whether a store of some kind existed before the track cut across the intersection, was coincident, or came later, is not known at this time. It is known that trains stoppled at the corner at some point to drop off supplies. And until 1904 there was a depot on the southeast corner of the intersection, to the northeast of the track. It was torn down in that year by Bostwick Bowen, and some of the blocks used to build the two room Bowen School.
Below are some views of the store on the northwest corner.
Left click on the images below for larger versions.
|
|
|
|
|
|
The Noornman family is assocated with the 44th Street and Kalamazoo Avenue corner starting in about 1910, when the large white house just south of the Shell Station location - as of year 2011 - was built in 1910. Apparently Jacob
Left click on the image below for a larger version.
The Norman house in 2011.
Noorman bought the general store in the northwest corner, and settled in. The two photographs above, middle and right, show a "new store," built in 1927.
Below are some looks at the family over the years.
Left click on the image below for a larger version.
Left click on the images below for larger versions.
|
|
|
|
|
|
None of the photographs above are dated. Based on marriage records, one guesses the top pair of photos and the bottom pair are from around 1920. The middle pair is anyone's guess. Jacob Noorman is not in the photograph. If it is assumed that he has died, an upper bound on the date can be found.
Left click on the images below for larger versions.
|
|
|
|
Left click on the image below for a larger version.
Jacoba noorman, May 4, 1956.
