User:Jhamstra

I neither profess nor aspire to being a genealogist.

At the urging of several relatives I have attempted to collect, reconstruct and reconcile the various family histories compiled by relatives of myself and of my wife.

I have also drawn heavily from records that are openly available online to augment, confirm and correct the private records. For the most part I have found the public and the family records to be in agreement although I have certainly found errors in both kinds of sources.

I am not personally invested in family legends. Regarding my extended family my research has confirmed some legends and refuted others.

I decided to join WeRelate because it provides a platform for:

a) Systematically capturing, organizing, publishing and hopefully preserving family histories

b) Synergy between my work and the work of others who are working on the same or overlapping family histories - hopefully together we can accomplish more than any one of us could individually

Regarding my Hamstra/Vellema and Bijker (Frisian) family trees, substantial reconstructions had already been undertaken by others on WeRelate, notably Klaas. My Van Leeuwen/Boxem family trees draw heavily from existing Dutch reconstructions. Jennifer has been helpful in finding sources for my Dutch family trees. Since joining WeRelate I have been able to augment their work and they have kindly provided assistance in augmenting mine.

Regarding my Wilson, Newton and Brewer family trees, I have brought results from other web sites [1] [2] [3] to WeRelate. I have verified their reconstructions wherever possible. In each case their content has withstood careful scrutiny, and their authors have shown themselves open to additional information and corrections. These authors are aware of my contributions to WeRelate, and I gratefully acknowledge both their prior work and also their assistance in my work.

The Wilson and Newton reconstructions draw heavily from published Wilson and Newton genealogy books. Although necessarily incomplete and not without some errors, these books represent an enormous amount of research and constitute a major contribution to the knowledge of these family histories.

Jim Hamstra [4]