Peter

A Brick Wall in the Family Tree Sometimes there’s that one ancestor you long to know more about, but who seems to have vanished from the records. For me, it was the wife of Jacob Jans Hanse (c. 1640), my earliest known ancestor in the Hanse line. Some online trees listed her as Engeltje Jans,… Read More »Brick Wall Broken: After Years of Searching

An Heirloom That Spoke Up. A Cabinet as the Beginning of My Dutch Family Research. It all started with a cabinet. Not just any cabinet, but a stately, dark wooden piece that I inherited from my uncle – who told me it had been “in the family for generations.” There was a story attached to… Read More »How One Family Story Sparked a Life of Genealogy.