Discovering ancestors and relatives
Since early childhood I'm fascinated by what you could call 'the history of everday life': how people lived, what kind of clothing they wore, how they moved and earned a living. I enjoy open-air museums, traditional costumes, old crafts and utensils, not to mention old photopraphs. When my grandparents talked about the past (and they did!) I hung on their every word. So, my passion for family research was easily awakened in the mid-1990s by my father's father, who had requested some information about his ancestors from the municipal archives, and by a copy of a family tree that circulated in my mother's family.
Immediately after graduating in 1998, I borrowed a course book from the library and started working. Eversince, I have meticulously processed the collected data on my own and my husband's ancestors and relatives in a computer program intended for that purpose. A practical choice, it allows you conjured up your family schematically on screen, click through generations and easily share the lot on the internet - hence this page.
But what if you've learned more about your ancestors than just the dates and places of their births, marriages and deaths? If they've let you in on their stories, left you the poems and paintings they created and boxes full of photographs? If archives, image databases and books have given you a general idea of the place, the time and the circumstances in which they lived? And if you feel the need to share those discoveries too? Then genealogical software falls short, offering little space for the story behind the "dry facts". Maybe write a book instead? Well, I suppose you could try, but with considerable chance you'll turn out to be the one falling short here. Moreover: there's an almost endless stream of ancestors and relatives to discover, and every discovery raises new questions in desparate need for an answer. So, will such a book ever be finished? And who besides yourself is actually interested in its contents? With deep respect for everyone who does choose to write a book, I'll stick to a blog for the time being, so I can occasionally write a story about this or that, share a nice photo and link it with the family tree.
Herman John Franklin is the father of Robert 'Bobby' Franklin. Bobby was adopted by his mother's new husband when he was approximately six years old.
The domain Loculus.nl belongs to Jasper Huijsmans and Janine Moll. "Loculus familiae" is fun Latin, as a reference to our school days at the Murmellius Gymnasium in Alkmaar and to what this website aims to be: a spot for our ancestors and relatives.