The Long Distance Genealogist

I have decided it would be fun to start a blog and share my research efforts with others. My family consists of a mix of people some of whom have been in North America since the beginning of the seventeenth century and some who immigrated in the early twentieth century. But no matter when they came, they all have one thing in common. They all lived far away from where I live; so, all of my research has occurred at a distance. Thank goodness for the Internet. It has made long distance genealogy possible in a reasonable time frame.

I have found that there is relatively little published material on large sections of my family. I would like to share what I have learned with others so that what I have done is not lost forever.  I am hoping to meet and share information with other family members. Hopefully, we can learn some tricks from each other.  As part of this, I plan to talk about some research strategies that have worked and others that have not. Sometimes it’s the failures that teach us as much as the successes. And when we do have successes, it is so nice to share it with people who understand why you are dancing around in your office.

Who am I? I am a retired auditor and CPA and a grandmother. My husband died way too young. All the plans we had for “when we retire” went out the window. We were going to find a house near a lake, boat, fish and generally relax. This was what my husband wanted to do. So, since I didn’t have any strong opposition, I agreed. Actually, I thought I would spend my time reading while he fished. When he died, I had to come up with Plan B. My grandfather always said we could trace our roots back to the pilgrims. I can’t tell you how disappointed I was at the age of 10 to visit Plymouth Rock and not see any Pilgrims named Baldwin. As I grew older and wiser, I realized that you didn’t have to come on the Mayflower to be called a pilgrim. I decided to see if my grandfather was right. He was. My ancestors were founding families of many towns in Massachusetts and Connecticut. I also discovered that my grandmother could trace her Dutch roots back to the first ship of Dutch settlers arriving in New Netherlands in 1623. How cool is that!

On the other hand, my mother’s parents arrived at Ellis Island in 1901 from East Flanders, Belgium, settled in Paterson, New Jersey and raised a family. So like many of you, I have had to cross the pond and deal with old records in a foreign language. I am grateful that Family Search has so many records on line - not indexed but able to be searched. This has enabled me to take my maternal lines back several generations to the late 1700’s. It is also nice to have family still living in the “Old Country” who are always willing to help you out.

I have many challenges ahead. I have two second great grandmothers and one third great grandmother that I know nothing about except that they are Irish. They were part of the early Irish migration to Canada after the Napoleonic Wars. I think I need some help with these three ladies. I need to call in some Canadian help - someone to look at records that haven’t made it to the Internet yet. After that it will be on to Ireland and Irish records.

Then there is DNA. I have recently submitted a DNA sample to Family Tree DNA and received results back. I am still trying to work my way through the results. So far I have made contact with two people in the Netherlands. We are currently trying to find our common ancestor. I have also submitted a sample to Ancestry. I hope I will get some clues to help me with some of my biggest challenges.

Families I will be discussing are Baldwin, Wynne, Van Camp, Winegard (or Wyngaart), Tweed, Shannon, and Wilson (my three unknown Irish lines), Van De Veire, Dobbelaere, Cobert, Du Four, De Vriese, Vermussche and Eecke.