work on my family history

I’ve had this goal on the back burner for a while. Then the other night just on a whim I went to Rootsweb.com and was randomly checking some of the names from my family files to see if I could find any new connections. Lo and behold, I came up with connectios to both sides of my dad’s family, something that up until now seemed like a lost cause. I was honestly starting to believe that he was beamed down from a spaceship or something!

I started with what my mother and aunt could remember. It was just names, up to great-grandparents. I looked at official records and added children, etc but not much else. I kept looking for resources on the Internet, finally locating someone in the Netherlands who stated he could research the names I wanted (all 8 great-grandparents). After hiring him to do so and providing what I had, he was able to connect my family back in the Netherlands. It cost me a bit but was well worth it.

Since then, I’ve been able to look into LDS archives at one of their Family History Centers where you can “rent” microfiche records from all over the world. I found more and more. Eventually, I got hooked up with a couple of my relatives over in the Netherlands. One older gentleman had been researching my Beekman family for 20 years. He was excited to find someone in America who could add to his knowledge.