Much has been written about George Washington Voorhees and Sarah Louise Gee, their children, grandchildren, parents, grandparents and other ancestors. George and Sarah's people came to America from Holland and England hundreds of years ago. The Voorhees are Dutch. They came from Hees, Drenthe, Holland. The Gees are English. They came from Devonshire, England.

George Washington's great grandfather to came to America in 1660 with the first wave of Dutch settlers arriving in New Amsterdam [New York]. The Voorhees were sturdy, practical people but they were as wild a crew as any that ever landed on these shores. They looked upon the Puritans of New England as .. "parson-ridden snivelers with no appreciation for rum or a bawdy song .. " according to George R. Stewart in Family Names by Dr. J.N. Hook.

Both the Voorhees and the Gees were hard working, courageous, and had strong religious beliefs. The Dutch were connected to the Dutch Reform Church. They accepted Huguenots, Calvinists, Roman Catholics, and free thinkers. The English were of many religions; Puritans, Congregationalists, Calvinists, Quakers and others. They came to this country to be free of persecutions and to be able to worship their God. People on both sides of the family were known as honest, self-disciplined ancestors who endured many hardships.

From their very diverse backgrounds George and Sarah met in Iowa and married in 1880. Much of this information comes from Colleen Foley, who garnered information from her grandmother, Ida Ethel Voorhees Steinhauser McLean. Winnie Christenson Voorhees, the wife of George Washington Voorhees' son Leo, also did some family research. She wrote several pages on the Voorhees family in 1976 after she and Lee Voorhees visited Voorhees relatives in Illinois.