Posted on Facebook on 27 December 2015.


In a number of posts I have written about name bearers Weis(s)enborn, and about nine villages Weißenborn, from at least one of which, but possibly several, the family name most likely has originated. Equally likely it will remain speculation in which year, even in which century, the family name came into existence.

I reckon that that century will have been well before 1600, so that we, the living name bearers, are separated from that century by at least 10 generations. That means that our blood contains at most (1/1024)th of the blood of our first male name bearer who triggered our chain of descendancy. The remainder is the blood of all non-Weis(s)enborns that got mixed in over time.

Ever since I started investigating my Weisenborn ancestors, I have investigated with equal attention all blood lines that come together in me. Hence I know that I descend from German ancestors not only via Johannes Weisenborn born in Kassel in 1767, but via 3 more lines that originated in Germany in about the same time, the middle of the 18th century.

I am now living some 15 kilometers from the church in Uelsen in the “Grafschaft Bentheim” where in 1729 my German ancestor Berend van Tubbergen, a farmer growing and trading nuts, was buried and a few years earlier his youngest daughter Margaretha had been baptized, from whom I descend. I knew this in 2010 when we bought our mini-farm in Nordhorn. It may have slightly influenced our decision.

I have enjoyed putting a lot of work into the collection of the data about all Weis(s)enborns around the world and throughout time, see my webpage. I will keep doing so as long as I can make worthwhile progress. I will also keep looking for and enjoying finds about all my non-Weisenborn ancestors. It is, after all, far more likely that you, the reader, and I are related via them, our non-Weis(s)enborn ancestors, than via our Weis(s)enborn ancestry.