Thu 24 Aug 2006 @22:10
I got a phone call shortly after I moved to Central Florida. It was from a member of The Van Zandt Society, a group that assists with genealogical research on various lines of the Van Zandt families. (Spellings include Van Zandt, Vanzandt, Van Zant, Vanzant, Van Sant, Vansant, Van Sandt, Vansandt, Vinzant, Vinzauen, and more.) They were having their annual “family reunion” in the Central Florida area that year and she always went through the phone book when she traveled looking for “relatives”. I wasn’t interested in researching my family tree, but I told her I would pass along the information to my father.
With their help, he was able to track down some of our family history. (Which, even if I could remember the details right now, I would not bore you with here. Assuming it’s not already too late on that score.) And he and my mother have attended several of the family reunions and helped host one in the Louisville area.
Anyway, the group has had a web site since 1998, but it has always been hosted on the personal pages provided by the ISP of one or another of the members. Earlier this summer I was looking for the site but its current address was not showing up on any of the three search engines I often use. I wondered why they didn’t have a dedicated web site and registered domain name. So, I emailed the current newsletter editor/webmaster. I alerted her to the problems with the search engines and suggested the web host I’ve been using gives good service at a reasonable price.
She wrote back to thank me for the suggestions. We exchanged a couple other emails — she’s a fourth-cousin of mine that I’ve never met. And today she has officially announced the unveiling of VanZandtSociety.com. It will take some time before it rises in the search listings, but it’s there. She actually told me about it a couple weeks ago. Yeah, I know you don’t care. But if you’ve bothered to keep reading this far, you deserve a story that she shared with me.
Her father (who died a few years ago) and my father (and me too, sort of) have the same name, Leon Van Sant. Her father…
“lived in Hamilton [near Trenton] all of his 82 years with the exception of a few in the Army during WWII. Your father is a few years younger than my Leon who was born in 1917, but there’s a funny story that links them. My older sister was born 1948 and apparently my parents did business with a certain furniture store in Trenton. A few years later when your parents ordered a crib, my parents received the bill and had to notify the store that there were two Leon Van Sants in the area.”
I can hear that phone call in my head, “No, really. There’s another guy with the same name as me….”
Technorati tags: The Van Zandt Society~blog~personal~otoh~sydca
August 25th, 2006 at 10:28
I’m kind of curious as to why you wouldn’t want to research your family tree. I’d like to research mine, trouble is… my grandfathers had multiple wives and so did their fathers and so on. It would be a nightmare doing the research plus none were born here and records were not kept in Laos. Great site and very informative. I liked the reading the genealogy.
August 26th, 2006 at 00:55
that’s actually pretty interesting. mr. lime’s last name is unusual and we had no idea of his family history until we were on our honeymoon. i was ill and he waited outside a public restroom for me. in the meantime a fellow with a camera strap bearing our last name stood next to mr lime. they started talking, when i came out addresses were exchanged. we discovered we were realted and this fellow sent us a whole geneology going back to the colonial period. pretty crazy huh?
August 26th, 2006 at 09:58
Eh??? I left a long comment here yesterday…but it’s disappeared??!! Weird! Anyway, cheers for stopping by!