From prehistory to documented history — one family, one continuous journey.
About me

By asking yourself this question, you started a journey. It has enriched my life with many new friends  and experiences I never knew before.

Our ancestors

This site is presented with the hopes of preserving the memories of our ancestors. We owe them gratitude in their experiences and their lives.

Dordrecht

Dordrecht is my hometown and where I live today. The map is from “Blaeu’s Toonneel der Steden” Dutch city maps, (Willem and Joan Blaeu), 1652.

Emigration to America

Any information about the surname Kloosterman and emigrants to America is welcomed. Please Email me, Thank you !

Oil painting on canvas, View of Dordercht (from the Maas) by Aelbert Cuyp (Dordrecht 1620 –Dordrecht 1691), signed bottom left: A Cuyp, 1650.

The Bayeux Tapestry (Tapisserie de Bayeux or La telle du conquest) is an embroidered cloth nearly 70 metres (230 ft) long and 50 centimetres (20 in) tall that depicts the events leading up to the Norman conquest of England concerning William, Duke of Normandy, and Harold, Earl of Wessex, later King of England, and culminating in the Battle of Hastings. It is thought to date to the 11th century, within a few years after the battle. It tells the story from the point of view of the conquering Normans but is now agreed to have been made in England.

Dordrecht, Netherlands, from “Blaeu’s Toonneel der Steden” Dutch city maps, Edited by Willem and Joan Blaeu), 1652.

In the Land of Promise, Castle Garden, New York by Charles Frederic Ulrich, 1884. Castle Garden, today known as Castle Clinton National Monument, is the major landmark within The Battery, the 25 acre waterfront park at the tip of Manhattan. From 1855 to 1890, the Castle was America's first official immigration center, a pioneering collaboration of New York State and New York City.

“The oldest history book ever written is the one hidden in our DNA.”

The deepest roots of of my family’s genetic history lie far beyond Europe itself. Long before today’s recognizable haplogroups emerged, and long before the migrations that eventually shaped my paternal Y-DNA lineage (I-FGC15105) and maternal mtDNA lineage (H1c1k), a much older human story had already begun. It starts in Africa with the emergence of Homo sapiens. Around 60,000 years ago, small groups of modern humans began expanding beyond Africa through the Sinai Peninsula and along the Arabian coastline into the Levant, eventually reaching the Danube Basin and the rest of Europe.

Explore my “EUROPE IN DNA” journey

Y-DNA I-FGC15105 • mtDNA H1c1k
A personal journey across 50,000 years of migration, archaeology and genealogy — from prehistory to Jan Claesz (1557),
the first securely documented historical anchor in my family reconstruction.

Following My Ancestors Through Time

Out of Africa

Out of Africa

EUROPE IN DNA

Europe in DNA

Into the Danube basin

Into the Danube basin

“Our own genomes carry the story of evolution, written in DNA,
the language of molecular genetics and the narrative is unmistakable.
– Kenneth R. Miller –