Willard was displeased

This is Willard, born on 11 Nov 1918.

In celebration of the day on which he was born, Armistice Day, he was given the middle name Peace.

I have no idea why he was given the first name Willard. 

All of Willard's grandparents were born in the Netherlands and came to America. His father's family came in 1887 and his mother's in 1890.  His parents were born in the United States.

According to this article on Dutch naming traditions, sons were usually named after their grandfathers.  The first son gets the name of the father's father and the second son gets the name of the mother's father.  Both of Willard's grandfathers were named Jacob.  Both of the fathers of Willard's grandfathers were named Jacob. Willard's own father was named Jacob.

I did not find out until Willard had passed away, but he was quite displeased that he didn't get named Jacob. 

Sadness

There are a few items that I would be devastated to lose in a fire.  This is one of them:

Genealogie Vinjé Frans of Noors?

Back in 1997, my grandfather received a letter from a researcher in the Netherlands tracing our family tree.  He had determined that one of his ancestor's brothers had emigrated to the United States and he decided to track all his descendants down.  This was the results of his work. 

I can honestly say that without this book, I probably would have never gotten anywhere researching in the Netherlands despite their fantastic online records.  You see, my maiden name was spelled Van Gee.  I knew it was Dutch.  What I didn't know was it was spelled completely wrong.  My third great-grandfather who emigrated to the United States in 1890, Jacobus Johannis' last name was spelled Vinjé.

The Vinjé family arrived 29 Sep 1890 on the S.S. Spaarndam

On the census records, it is spelled Van Gee, and Vangee and Vingee.  Even on his headstone, it's spelled Vinja! I doubt that I could've figured it out myself.  It doesn't sound Dutch to me and maybe it didn't to the other people of Wayne County, New York, where there are lots of Dutch names, and that's how it evolved to Van Gee.  Thanks to the author of this book, my third cousin, twice removed, Jo Vinjé, I can now look up lots of records in the Netherlands without frustration.  He compiled this book, which my father was kind to secure a copy of for me.  My father traveled to the Netherlands several years ago and got to meet Jo in person.

It was with extreme sadness that I discovered a few days ago, that he had passed away.  He had been on my mind lately, I was wondering if he had ever decided if Vinjé was a French of Norwegian name.  I even emailed him at the address in the book and didn't get a response.  This prompted me to do some online searching and found a death notice online for him.  He passed away on 10 Apr 2013.

The start - this time.

This is not my first blogging rodeo.

I had knitting blog for a long time.  I enjoyed it and kept it up until our lives had some upheaval back in 2006.  It petered out and was deleted by the hosting company.  I stopped knitting about the same time, so it seemed like a natural conclusion.

I started this one for a couple of reasons. First, I jumped into Google+ yesterday again, hoping to cultivate some more genealogy knowledge.  I've been a Facebook user for awhile, but I don't have any genealogy contacts there at all, other than a New York Genealogy page I follow and contribute to.  Google+ seems more conducive to what I am looking for.  Sadly, I have not yet found a New York Genealogy community.

Second, I started this blog because I have been doing some research I think is very exciting and I wanted a forum to share my methods.  I could post my experience directly to Google+, but I have a tendency to be verbose so this way it makes things a little easier for people to ignore me.

Background:

I was born in Rochester, New York.  My father's maternal grandparents were immigrants from Belgium (Maldegem, Oost-Vlanderen) and his paternal great-grandparents (both sets) were Dutch immigrants (Zeeland, specifically Zeeuwsvlaanderen).  My mother's family has been in the same two counties (Wayne and Cayuga) for generations.  I have not yet found her immigrant ancestors.

My earliest genealogical memory is a family tree I had to prepare for 6th grade history class:

I was a little unclear on maiden names.

I wasn't close to any of my grandparents.  We moved to Texas when I was nine and we had very little contact with them.  Nevertheless, I have dabbled on and off with genealogy since that first chart.  I did have the opportunity to visit with my maternal grandmother in 1996 and got some fantastic photographs and information at that time.  I also got to visit with my paternal grandfather a couple of times before he passed away in 2011 and got some photos and information from him.  I am very lucky in that regard.

My daughter had a family tree project in the 4th grade at her school.  If you have read this far, you probably know it was really my project:

We made an A+

Since that time, the leaves on my side of the tree (right) look my fluffier, although I still haven't found any Revolutionary War ancestors, they must be there.

Here we go!  Next stop: Belgian archives.