Sunday, August 18, 2013   There are a few items that I would be
devastated to lose in a fire.  This is one of them:  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.