Hello to you who is interested in my project.

On this page I share the status of my project. When I was 11 years old, I asked my grandpa where we, the Weisenborns, originated from. He replied that it was obvious that we originated from Germany. But he couldn't say when or how. It took me a few years to find the evidence that my ancestor Johannes had emigrated from Kassel in Hessen to Alkmaar in the Netherlands in 1805, another few years and a visit to Marburg to find out that his father Johann Martin Weisenborn alias Johann (or Hans) Martin Wittenborn had come from Veckerhagen, a village a few kilometers north of Kassel, and yet another few years to find clues that his father Zacharias Wittenborn was born in 1667 in an as yet unknown place to the south, but within traveling distance from Veckerhagen.

At 16 I made an attempt to gather all information I could about all Weißenborns in Germany. I had the objective to combine all lines into the past, hoping that they would converge to the area where my ancestor Johann Martin had also come from. However, the sheer volume of information overwhelmed me. I threw away all the material I had gathered, to wipe out the memories of this failed attempt.

One and a half years ago, at 53, I felt ready for another attempt to gather all information I could find about all Weißenborns, and now about all Wittenborns as well, using the internet and an idea I have developed over time about how to keep the information organised and tractable. This web page is the result of my one-and-a half-years of dedication to my goal.

The reason for investigating the Wittenborns as well as the Weißenborns is not only that my own ancestors changed their family name when they crossed the border of the "Lautverschiebung" or soundshift. In the book "Alte Kerstlingerödische Denkwürdigkeiten", published in 1724, it is mentioned that the village Weissenborn near the spring of the stream Garte was also called Witteborn in the papers in the archive of Rittmarshausen.

I have joyfully put in the effort it took to collect and combine all the data shown in the family trees you find on this web site. As I have been either given these data, found them in open sources on the internet or collected them directly in the archives - all for free - I ask nothing in return for the access I give to my data collection to every-one who is interested in browsing through the data.

I do however explicitly forbid everyone to exploit these data commercially.
I have developed the system to organise the data together with my brother-in-law Wouter Boer and my son Hildebrand. The system may be copied for free, but as with the data, not exploited commercially. If commercial exploitation does take place and I find out, I will strive for the return of all money to whoever it was taken from illegally and compensation for my effort required to achieve this.

I wish you joy in wandering through the available trees. If you are my namesake, I hope you find yourself in one of the trees. If you have complementary information that you want to make available to me and thereby to all people who are interested, please give me the data, and I will insert them in the existing family trees or add a new tree when necessary.

Toon Weisenborn

(do scroll on)

It is probably intuitively clear how to use the system I have chosen to organise the data. The symbols and abbreviations are explained in the header of the data base. With a little help from an online dictionary you will be able to translate the Dutch words you may come across.

1. Identify the person you are interested in in the following data base:
   • All Weißenborns & Wittenborns worldwide.
   You can search using Crtl-F: press down the "Crtl" key, hold it down and press "F". Key in the name you want to search for in the space at the upper right hand side of the screen. With "Enter" you may browse through the hits.
2. If the first name of the person is underlined, clicking on the link will open up the family tree to which this person belongs, from the earliest known ancestor to the particular person.
3. By clicking on the underlined names in the family tree, the families of these - almost exclusively male - persons open up when closed, and close when opened.
4. Clicking on the year(s) behind the person's name brings you to the place in the database where you find all details of that person known to me. You find these data on the first line(s) at the top on the screen.