I remember as a child digging through the contents of an old wooden travel box on the attic. The box was used intensively by my great grandmother around 1900 but now contained a large family collection of old postcards, framed pictures, photo albums, diaries, artifacts, drawings, paintings, newspapers, etc. My grandpa stored loads of old family stuff like this in the attic before he sold the house to my dad in the 70’s. At this time it looked like it had been here ever since my grandpa left it there more than 60 years ago. All of it is family related and some of it over a 150 years old. I was intrigued and had the feeling that as a family we should never let this treasure get lost.
A lot has changed since than. The attic has been cleaned up and renovated. Stuff has been sorted out, things have spread along family members, donated to a museum, broken or simply disappeared. There is still quite a lot of cool stuff left though and over the years some things like family paintings have been renovated and a small portion of the pictures have been digitized. The box is also still there but is used to store other items.
Around 2008 I had the idea to create a space on the internet where we could easily share this wealth of information with the rest of the world. In 2010 the plans about a website got serious with the open air play in Bathmen about Otto August Westra and his adventures in the Dutch East Indies. The writer of the play dug up a lot of information about the Westra’s in the late 19th early 20th century. This triggered Wikke to offer help and Otto to hire webspace for the site. In December 2010 we physically started building the site.
Under construction
This website is currently under construction and will stay under
construction for years, maybe for ever. There are many gaps in the
knowledge of the history of our family and the hundreds of 19th and 20th
century family pictures will take ages to digitize. We will continue to
explore and add extra’s on this website.
Please come back someday soon to find more news, information, photo’s and film about our Westra family. If you have any suggestions please let me know by sending me an e-mail.
Kind regards,
Sil
December 2010
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