My Family
The "van Beverhoudt" Family Tree
Resource Documents
In recent months, I have become very interested in my geneology, which includes my paternal (van Beverhoudt) family tree. For the benefit of other
"van Beverhoudt" family members who might also like to research their family trees, I'm providing below some information that I hope you will find
useful.
Up to this point, my main source of information has been the internet. I have used Google extensively to look for documents and references to the
"van Beverhoudt" name. Sometimes it's been just a matter of luck on what I find. One thing to keep in mind when doing searches on Google or any
other search engine is that the name "van Beverhoudt" has been spelled many different ways throughout history -- and not alway consistently. For
example, sometimes the "van" (Dutch origin) may have been written as "von" (German version) or not used at all. In other cases, the "Beverhoudt"'
might have been spelled without the "D" (Beverhout) or with an extra "A" (Beaverhoudt). So, be flexible in your online searches. What has worked
best for me is to search for just "Bever" and then go from there. Another trick when looking at computerized documents is to remember to use the "find" function in your browser. You can save a lot of time by using
the "find" function to look through a long document for the term "Bever".
Most recently, I signed up with the geneology site www.ancestry.com. It's about
$25 for a 1-month subscription and, if you spend some time with it during that month, you can find a lot of interesting information, even copies of
old hand-written census documents. If you sign up for a whole year, there's a small discount on the monthly fee. Ancestry.com lets you refine your
searches many different ways, including the name you're looking for, dates of birth and/or death, places of birth and/or death, etc. But I've found
it most useful to not use too many different criteria, because you might miss important information. It might seem intimidating to get a list of
a couple thousand "van Beverhoudts" to go through, but if you scan the names and bypass the ones that obviously don't match what you're looking for,
it's not too bad.
When you do get results on ancestry.com, they usually first give you a summary page with basic information like the person's name, date of birth,
and a few other pieces of information. There might also be a link to the actual document this information came from. This could be an old Danish
West Indies census record, a U.S. census record through 1930 (later years are not yet available because of privacy restrictions), birth or death
records, or even immigration records. This last type of document showed, for example, that my grandfather had travelled from St. Thomas to New York
City twice during the 1920s. Ancestry.com also lets you buy copies of these documents, but I've found that it's just as useful (and much cheaper)
just to use their "save to hard drive" option to just download and save the document to your computer, where you can view it full size at any time you want.
There are several local (Virgin Islands) geneology sites that you will come across if you do Google searches for the "van Beverhoudt" name. These
have provided me with several very useful family name and family history documents, two of which I have provided links to below. One thing that I have
found frustrating, however, is that as of March 2010, the emphasis on documenting and computerizing Danish West Indies census documents has been on
the St. Croix population. Very little, if any, census information is available online for St. Thomas and St. John. That has really been a problem
for me. Although a 1930 U.S. Census document showed that my great grandfather was born on St. Croix, and I've been able to find some "possible"
family links on St. Croix, I'm missing alot of information for other members of my family on St. Thomas. For example, my grandfather was born on
St. Thomas, not St. Croix. But I can find no information about him in the currently available Danish census records. Also, I have no way to find out
whether I'm related to any of the "van Beverhoudts" from the colonial year (1600s-1800s), whether landowners, slaves, or both. Hopefully the powers
that be will get around to getting the St. Thomas and St. John Danish census records online in the near future.
In closing, I hope you find the four PDF (Adobe Acrobat) files I have linked below to be useful. The first one is a family tree with informational
notes for the earliest "van Beverhoudt" family known to settle in the Danish West Indies (U.S. Virgin Islands). They appear to have come here from the
Dutch islands (Saba, St. Eustatius, Curacao) and set up plantations, first on St. Thomas and later on St. John and St. Croix. Most prominent of these
were a Lucas van Beverhoudt and a later grandson also named Lucas. After the father died, his son Adrian took over the family estate. His later son,
Lucas #2, moved to St. Croix and later bought an estate in New Jersey, which he called "Beverwick." Sources I found online show that none other than
George and Martha Washington knew Lucas #2 and sometimes visited his estate.
The second document is more personal to me, because it summarizes my own "van Beverhoudt" family tree. In the first part, I list "possible but unconfirmed"
ancestors here in the islands. Although I haven't been able to confirm whether these persons really are my ancestors, some of the details are just too
close to known facts to be ignored. Hopefully I'm on the right track. The second part of this document summarizes my actual, confirmed family tree
beginning with my grandfather and working its way down. For obvious privacy reasons, I didn't list complete names for any of my current relatives, but
only summarized the numbers of children, grandchildren, etc. Incidentally, my grandfather, Ernest, was born on St. Thomas and was a
merchant who had a dry goods store on Main Street, St Thomas during the late 1800s and early 1900s. At some point in his life, he moved to Venezuela, where he married my grandmother and they
had four children. My father, Arnold, moved back to St. Thomas as a young man and lived the rest of his life here on St. Thomas. He was an auto
mechanic and had an auto repair shop called "Your Service Station" behind the Market Square, where Muhsen's Grocery is located today. The rest of
my "van Beverhoudt" family stayed in Venezuela (with some moving to other Latin American countries), and I still have many, many cousins in Venezuela
and Latin America.
The last two PDF files linked below are documents that I found online. The first is a semi-narrative history of the "van Beverhoudt" name in the
Danish West Indies from around 1670 through the mid-1800s. This document was compiled in 2009 by a researcher in Denmark. The second document is a
one-line list of entries from Danish census documents for people with the last name "Beverhout." This document was prepared in 1945, also by someone
in Denmark.
I hope you find this information useful and, if you have any clues regarding my own "van Beverhoudt" family tree, I'd certainly like to hear from you.
You can contact me either through Facebook or at my email address: arnoldvb@islands.vi.
- The "van Beverhoudt"
Family - Part 1: Danish Colonial Time Period
- The "van Beverhoudt"
Family - Part 2: My Personal Family Tree Summary
- The "van Beverhoudt"
Family - Appendix A: Virgin Islands Families - van Beverhoudt (2009)
- The "van Beverhoudt"
Family - Appendix B: Names of Inhabitants of the Danish West Indies (1945)
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