Welcome to my website
What started as curiosity about a few names in old registers, grew into a lifelong quest for traces of the past. For 45 years, genealogical research has been the common thread in my life. I delved into families such as Bescheij, Groothuijse, Hallewaard, Marschall and Buddenborg, and the many lines interwoven with them. My passion is making visible lives that had almost disappeared from the picture, people of the past, with worries, hope and work, just like us.
My background as a medical analyst has taught me to look closely. I apply that same method in genealogical research: going back to the primary source, checking what has been handed down, and correcting where necessary. To paint a picture that is as accurate and reliable as possible to do justice to the people and the time in which they lived.
Genealogy is more than just facts. In the silence of the archive, the researcher becomes a detective: following those traces in deeds, deciphering signatures, recognizing patterns in guild entries. With each find, a family slowly emerges.
On this website you will find the results of that research, supplemented by articles and stories in which genealogy, art and history touch each other. Hopefully they will also awaken in you the curiosity to start searching yourself, for the person behind the name and for a past that can come so surprisingly close in this way.