The New Jersey branch of the Tuit's started with Jan Tuit wo immigrated from the Netherlands at the beginning of the twentiest century. He and his four children came to the USA, when times were not to good in the Netherlands. Right now the USA Tuit's are still a quite large group, compared to their Dutch cousins.
This is a picture of the house of Jan's cousin Klaas Tuit who lived a few hundred meters further down the road. Jan Tuit and his family had almost the same type of house, just before he and his family left for the States. This house was situated close to the watermill at Havelterberg, where Jan maintained the pump-engines.
His grandfather came from a little place Nijeveen, close to Busselte, where a lot of people tried to earn a living as peat-workers or as small farmers.
Nijeveen was a part of the low-wetland where the Netherlands got there name from, in this furtile land a lot of cattle was bread. Already in the eightteenth century peat-bogging was a new way of exploiting the land, and a lot of this land became wet again. Busselte (a small group of farms) is situated on the southside-slope of one of the highest hills in Drenthe "Bisschops berg" with an altitude of 100 meters. From there you can see miles far to the meadows (now) of Nijeveen.
Take a look for the Tuits from the Netherlands
E-MAIL Klaas Steffens or E-MAIL Jan Tuit
Here is the link to the all surnames
from USA Tuit's
Here is the link to the INDEX of USA Tuit-families
I'm also researching other family-names Steffens
and Thomassen
See here for links to other family homepages Links