My name is Michael VanBaaren. I live in Sacramento, California, with my wife, Kathleen. We've had pugs for the past 13 years. Our first, Pug-Nellie, passed away in late 2007 at the age of 13 after suffering from a collapsed trachea. We lost our 2 year old black pug, Betsy Ross, in mid 2007 from a spider bite. We've now welcomed a feisty, yet sweet little pug into our lives - Daisy. She was so much to handle, we had to get her a playmate, so we got Ringo, who is half Maltese and half Shih Tzu. They get along very well and add a lot of smiles to our lives. I have been seriously tracing my family tree since I was 12 years old (I was asking my parents and other relatives genealogy-related questions when I was as young as 8 years old). I graduated from Sacramento City College with a degree in Library Science in May, 1995, and currently work in the Library of the California Environmental Protection Agency. The flags above represent my ethnic mixture ... an American of English, Irish, Scottish, German, Swiss, Dutch, Norwegian, Swedish and French ancestry.
I volunteered for 10 years at the LDS Sacramento Family History Center (one of their first non-Mormon staff members) from the time I was 16 years old, and was my shift's supervisor for 2 years. I have undertaken genealogical research for others in Norwegian, Dutch and Swedish records since I was 16 years old, and in Mexican records since 1989 (the experience with Mexican records comes from my wife's ancestry), and have enjoyed several trips to the Family History Library in Salt Lake City (I particularly enjoy burying myself for hours in the 1st level basement where the Dutch and Scandinavian books and microfilm are located!), and try to get out there about every other year or so. I have yet to make the pilgrimage back to the homes of my ancestors, but I have big plans to do this some day, as travel is one of my favorite luxuries in life.
I have kept up a correspondence with my cousins living in Stavanger, Norway, through a miraculous (or so it seemed to me) series of events that unfolded in 1979, when I was 13 years old. My mother had always talked about how her grandmother corresponded with our family in Stavanger. She even recalled her grandmother receiving letters during World War II that were censored by the Nazis (she said that what came out of the envelope looked like confetti). She also remembered her grandmother sending off a big care package immediately after the war. When my mother's grandmother passed away in 1960, contact with the relatives in Norway was lost. I had been rumaging through my uncle's old books one day, when I found my great-grandmother's Norwegian-English dictionary. Out of the dictionary fell a letter from Stavanger with a postmark of 1949. The thing that most grabbed my attention was that there was a return address on it! I took a chance and wrote a letter to "Davida Davidsen" who was listed on the envelope (my grand-aunt informed me that this was her 1st cousin). I didn't hear anything for a long time, but then one day a letter arrived from Stavanger. Of course, the letter was in Norwegian, and the handwriting was shaky, but I knew it was a relative, because it was signed "Margit Davidsen Lunde". I was so excited that I could barely wait the few days it took for my mother to arrange for us to go pay a visit to an old co-worker, who she knew spoke Norwegian. With her help (and the help of that worn old dictionary), I was able to translate most of the letter, and contact with the family had been re-established after nearly 20 years. Even more exciting to me was when my 3rd cousin, Roald Sirevaag (his grandmother and my grandmother were 1st cousins) paid us a visit in the Summer of 1983.
I began my research in the old days before the Internet. Although I had lots of fun researching the hard way, I am so thankful that the Internet has played such an important part in furthering my research and establishing relationships with other cousins. I found my relatives in Norway the "hard" way (although I was extremely lucky in that I didn't have to work too hard to establish contact!), but it was the Internet that brought me in touch with my VanBaaren relatives in the Netherlands. I had been posting messages on the Benelux genealogy newsgroup for several months (Benelux refers to the "Low Countries" - Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg), when I received an e-mail one day from Frans van Baaren in Holland. He was asking about my lineage, and when I replied that my immigrant great-great grandfather was Johannes Engelbert van Baaren, he answered back with the exciting news that he was the great-grandson of Franciscus van Baaren - the younger brother of Johannes Engelbert! Frans' great-grandfather and my dad's great-grandfather were 1st cousins. We exchanged a lot of information on our Dutch ancestors. I helped Frans add to the pedigree, and he helped me to fill in the missing information on all of Johannes Engelbert's siblings and their families. I once again got to meet a European cousin when Frans' son, also named Frans, came for a visit in July 2002. He stayed with us for 4 days - we attended a concert and had a large family barbecue, and enjoyed a very nice visit.
I've been very fortunate and enjoyed my hunt immensely. I've had many great trips as a result - Salt Lake City, frequent trips to San Francisco to visit the Sutro Library and the National Archives Branch in San Bruno - not to mention all of the cemeteries my wife and I have visited throughout California and our trip to Goodland, Kansas. I've been to the LDS Libraries in Oakland and Los Angeles. I've met so many great people and owe so much to so many. People have been really kind, not only by sharing what they already had, but going out of their way to look for information they knew I was hunting for.
Genealogy is a big part of my life, but I do have other interests. I enjoy travel (especially our yearly vacations to Pismo Beach), music, reading, dining out with friends and family, movies, gardening and our dogs.
If you find that we have ancestors in common, please send me an e-mail. I am always happy to share my information with others. I figured that putting my ancestry on the Internet would allow others to see what family lines I am researching. If you are interested in more detailed information on any of my ancestral families, I can send a GEDCOM via e-mail from my database. If you don't have a genealogy software program, I highly recommend that you download the Personal Ancestral File (PAF) program from the FamilySearch web site of the LDS Family History Library - it's free and an awesome program!
Thanks for taking the time to read about who I am.
