Aalders Web Site

My name is Henry Aalders ,Dutch for Henrich Ahlers my forefather , and I am the Webmaster of this site.  Greetings from sunny Queensland  Australia This website records the development of the Dutch family Aalders descended from "Hollandgaenger" Henrich Ahlers from Vechta born 1689 and Casper Otto Alers from nearby Bakum who settled more or less at the same time in the small rural  town of Velsen west of Haarlem .in the Netherlands They both made their home at premises at the Jan Gijzenvaart  which indicates family ties . Casper Otto broughtr his own bride ,the then young Margareta Velt from Freere near Lingen and married her upon arrival in Velsen in 1735 . Henrich ,possibly his Uncle ,aged 46 , also wasted little time to find a Dutch widow and took her as his bride in 1735 ,She  presumably died shortly after for Henrich in Nov 1736 was again at the altar ,this time with 20 year old Antje Bijmans , The Dutch Alders family from Velsen descended from Casper Otto Alers and the Aalders family from Henrich Genealogie is a "fun thing" , .A puzzle in which knowledge and educated guesswork both play a part and sometimes we guess right and other times we are astray . That is because we deal with very imperfect and incomplete information .. As we  think that at last we got onto the right location where we hope to find our ancestors ,we discover that some Ahlers clan members moved from Wenigsen Deister ,Bergedorff , and Bargteheide to Ganderkesee happlily mixing in with the "locals " resulting in  hundreds of Johanns and Hinrichs to pick from ......Ganderkesee does not ,as I discovered ,mean Ganderkesee ,for I now find Varel and Delmenhorst ,a few Aschhausen folk and even some  far northerners from the Jade area all associating themselves with Ganderkesee . What does Oldenburg mean ? It seems to include folk from Oldenburg city its suburbs ,Varnhorn Visbek Vechta , Bakum Cloppenburg etc etc etc ...That is all part of the fun of trying to trace our forefathers .Sometimes I just wonder if some of them just did not want to be found ....When as a boy of 15 a "generous"  50 years ago I left Hollandd with my parents for New Zealand ,a very old Uncle of mine ,brother of my paternal grandmother with Italian heritage ,proudly pushed a well read  book on the life of Pope Pius XI in my less than anxious hands which he had carefully marked for me .Many years later when I became interested in my own descendancy .I decided to take it with me on a holiday to browse through . Proudly I then told my children that we seemed to be related to archbishop   Achilles Ratti as he was known prior to his election as pope . I could put up with the mans allegedly foul  temper ,which got him the nickname "the roaring fire " .After I learned that this particular "Holiness"  told the German people in 1935 to be good Germans and be obedient to their Fuehrer ,Herr Hitler ,all enthusiasm to let my grandchildren know of this remote family  connection has well and truly left me .  Today I am much more fascinated to learn how one of the Ahlers clan ,sweet on a "huepsch" and gorgeous looking 18 year old ,tried in vain to talk her older sister out of her inheritance rights and instead passing them to him and her young sister . The 27 year old  had no ears for that ." If you want the farmlet ,I come with it . " was her answer . She sure was not a bundle of laughs and I guess relatively ugly . The wedding bans had been read ,but on the set Saturday ,Mr Ahlers turned up with the 27 year old . and according to the Catholic Church record they and not her pretty sister were wed .The same Church records show how exactly one week later Mr Ahlers wed the 18 year old in the same Catholic church . . It has occurred to me that the parish priest might have been an advanced alcoholic.with severe memory problems !!A year later ,Mr Ahlers was a proud father of both a girl and a boy and both wives obliged yearly with offspring .Six years later  Father in law..died and as Mr Ahlers inherited the farm ,he wasted no time in marrying a 16 year old . ...Poor and landless the family of my forebears might have been .,but they seemed to achieve something that King Henry VIII was unable to do .Perhaps it should have been an Ahlers on the throne of England !!!So   ,anybody who can help enlighten me of how precisely the Bakum family ties in with Henrich and his family possibly  from the Visbek area ,and who is willing to share his information or opinion with me ,please do so , I would be  grateful  for any hints or help provided by you . and naturally what I have found or discovered  is available for anyone else looking for possible solutions . My email address is haalders@bigpond.net.au Happy hunting Henry  Aalders  his site was created using MyHeritage.com. This is a great system that allows anyone like you and me to create a site for their family and  publish their family tree on the Internet.If you have any comments or feedback about this site, please click here to contact me.Our family tree is posted online on this site! There are 521 names in our family site.The site was last updated on 12July 2008, and it currently has just me as a  registered member Enjoy browsing !