Last week, I promised to throw something together for today's open thread. This will be a fairly short diary, but I hope my genealogy-geek friends will find it sweet.
Genealogy & Family History Community
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I have mentioned in other diaries that my Dad's parents and two of his brothers immigrated to America from The Netherlands in 1904. When I began researching this line about 12 years ago, I had a few names, a few dates, one town, and a huge language barrier to work with. Fortunately, fairly early on I discovered a Dutch website with abstracts of civil records. It was also possible to request photocopies of the actual records. After dropping 45 euros to get copies of Grandma and Grandpa's birth and marriage certificates, I decided to content myself with the online abstracts so that I would not have to take out a second mortgage or start working a third job.
The abstracts were very well done, and included a great deal of information, such as names of parents, occupations, prior marriages, etc. All this was especially helpful to be sure you had the Albert Dirks who was your X-great-grandfather, and not the Albert Dirks who was your X-great-grandfather's first cousin. For example, this is the abstract for my 4g-grandmother:
Don't you just love that name? I think it is my favorite of all my ancestors.
Still, I coveted the original documents. A couple of years ago, descendants of my two Dutch-born uncles also expressed interest in getting their birth records. I logged back into the site, and found that it was under new management and was being reorganized...and I was really upset that I could no longer find anything. Grrr.
But last Saturday, as I was casting about for ideas for today's diary, I idly logged in again, and found:
!! So I clicked on the image icon:
Here is another abstract from the old site:
It may be just me, but this document:
seems a much worthier record of the marriage of my Dad's maternal grandparents:
As you might guess, I'm keeping fairly busy with downloads--including my uncles' birth records. It's been too cold to go outside, so may as well do something useful inside...anything to avoid cleaning out closets. For those with Dutch ancestry, check out
WieWasWie (WhoWasWho).
Before I turn over the floor, I do want to send good wishes to our fearless leader, edwardssl, whose daughter is getting married today!
And also to make a plea for volunteers for upcoming open threads:
CURRENT SCHEDULE
Mar 13 - open for adoption
Mar 20 - fenway49
Mar 27 - open for adoption
April 3 - open for adoption
Apr 10 - open for adoption
If you can help out with a diary, please leave a note in the comments or shoot a kosmail to edwardssl or me. THANKS!