Co-operation of Henk & Aat Versteegt

Co-operation.

Our site has had quite an effect. In July 2001 I decided that the www.versteegt.net site would no longer be just the homepage of myself (Aat). I made the decision to use the site for a more common purpose, that being, to present the site as the web site for the Versteegt/Ver Steegt family. After I made that decision, there have been many rapid developments. At this time we have made contact with several distant family members and also contact with Henk Versteegt, our great family tree researcher.

After Henk Versteegt and I had several phone conversations, we decided to meet on Saturday, September 1, 2001. The purpose of our meeting was to investigate how we could cooperate to get the family-history published in a distinguished and well-considered manner. Henk and I also made the decision that the chosen manner in which to publish the family history would have a high degree of continuity. After extensive deliberation, Henk and Aat agreed on the following statements:

- All information will be published first on the site.

- When the information on the site is complete, all the information compiled will be put on a CD to preserve it for posterity. A written copy of the same information would also be made available. Of course it is always possible to print the entire site yourself.

- To guarantee the continuity of the family-site Henk and Aat agreed that if Aat ever stopped, for any reason whatsoever, managing the site, that Aat would pass on the management and all the rights in relation to the domain name www.versteegt.net to Henk Versteegt.

- Henk Versteegt's intention's are to put the extensive family archives, after his death, at the disposal of the Rijksarchiefdienst (General State Archive) in The Hague. We agreed that before this conveyance would take place that Aat would have the opportunity to glance over Henk Versteegt's archive and Aat could copy anything he finds of interest. Aat Versteegt would not remove any information from the archive.

After Henk and I discussed all the official issues, we began to see how we could supplement each others family tree information. Below we see some photo's of this:

After the genealogical database of Henk's was copied for Aat, we investigated some important issues, including the differences between the 2 databases. In this photo we see Aat and Henk browsing through a part of the archive.

This is the archive of the Versteegt family put together by Henk.

And of course a lot of investigation to do searching for new starting points.

The day Henk and Aat spent working on the Versteegt family archives was a very enjoyable day. We think we've made a good foundation to cooperate for the future. We have confidence that with this statement the description, the recording and the publishing of our family-history will be picked up. As a result of the information provided by Henk the next few weeks and months will be spent working to update the family-site.

The co-operation (an overview of the investigation).

After the databases of Henk and Aat were merged in September 2001, there were still loose ends in the family tree. We had to investigate and determine if all the loose ends were correctly written down as Versteegt, including the last T. To clarify this question of loose ends once and for all Henk, Aat, and their wives, Fieke and Dicky, went to the archive in Utrecht on November 29, 2001 to copy the official deeds and then study the deeds at home.

Henk had done a lot of preliminary work by putting all the data we needed to research on lists. The list compiled by Henk allowed us to search for deeds a lot quicker. But still the searching for deeds took a lot of time and effort. Because most of the people we were interested in were born or married after 1811 most of the information can be found on microfilm. Here we see Henk and Fieke at the left and below we see Dicky browsing through the microfilms.

At the end of the day in Utrecht we felt we had a completed gathering of the information we needed from the archive. But now there was even a bigger challenge. Could we, with the new information we had gathered, establish a connection between some of the loose ends and our own family tree? Fanatics that we are, we decided to keep on searching for this indispensable information. Unfortunately all the clues we had were getting us nowhere and did not establish the links we had hoped for. We will have to investigate a lot more to accomplish this.

After returning to Aat and Dicky's place the night of November 29, 2001, we evaluated all the information gathered at the archive. The incorporation and the checking of all the data will take a few weeks. Also we used the opportunity to make some additional agreements about the layout of the family tree we publish on the site. We decided that the PDF files will be no longer used. Instead there will be an overview with all the female descendants incorporated too. With this overview we do justice to all our female relatives and their children will be recorded (as far as we know them) in the family tree too.

Last edited on: 03-05-02