User:JDD1931

Closson Liden Bush de Jong Dijkstra Dykstra den Herder Wynia Ludens

I'm an aging data freak with a big pile of family history drifting in, and it just seemed inevitable that someone had to put it all in computer files. Didn't seem to be many volunteers so here I am.

There's a lot to work on and from. The Buttons have their own 900 page tome by Nye (not only am I in it, but so are my wife and kids) so I don't intend to reinvent that wheel. For the Dutch side, I have a huge leg up in the work of Sue Pudwill who in 1987 completed a 131 page manuscript titled THE DE JONG / VAN DYKE FAMILY HISTORY. A labor of love over many years, it was reproduced in typescript and distributed among the family in an unknown number of copies. Whatever it lacks in technical rigor is more than made up by the many personal stories, remembrances, and pictures. It has formed my ideas about what a Family History should be and been my source of first (and sometime last) resort in the absence of original documents. Since much of the information was obtained first hand from close family members, it cannot be disregarded without substantial evidence to the contrary.

For earlier generations, she engaged a professional Genealogist in The Netherlands to research our ancestors. Many of his findings have been confirmed by internet research, notibly in TRESOAR and AlleFriezen.

Much of my effort has been simply to get much of Pudwill's basic data into digital form, but the project is addictive and I spend a lot of time when I should be entering existing data, out on the web looking for more. We shall see where it goes. And then there are the New Englanders and Marylanders and the Canadians . . .