My grandmother told me we had Colonial Dutch ancestors when I was no older than five. She said there were some on her side and on her husband's and also in my mother's mother's family. She had a reproduction of a map of the Netherlands on the wall, and would point to a place in West-Friesland, probably around where the Beemster is, and tell me that some of ours came from there. I used to gaze at that map, and at a picture she had of a Dutchman smoking a clay pipe, with a ship in the background. Several years ago I learned my grandparents had been seventh cousins once removed, through two Lane/Van Pelt sisters, Catherine and Moica Gysberts Lane. I don't think my grandmother had been aware of that specific relationship though, because the connection was through a DeHart ancestor. The DeHart name in eastern Pennsylvania had morphed into the pronunciation "Z'art," which was even the way the name was spelled on a fractur birth certificate from 1851. I was pleased to learn the actual surname when I discovered a newspaper article about an interview with my 3-great grandmother, Mary DeHart, born 1815, which had been written in 1903. I recently had occasion to revisit the Beemster in virtuality as I learned of the death of William Whittington, an un-Dutch tobacco merchant from Accomack, Virginia. He died in Graft in 1659 while on a ship-purchasing trip there, and was buried in the floor of the church in Graft, in a grave owned by the Bestevaers, ship captains and tobacco merchants there. Whittington's grave stone survives to this day, wonderfully engraved with a ship in bas-relief, along with his clearly legible name and epitaph. Jan Bestevaer brought over several shiploads of colonists to New Amsterdam, returning to Holland with cargoes of tobacco. One day I'll check the ship's lists to see if any of mine came over in a ship captained by a Bestevaer. It's interesting how things revolve in echoes through time and space. Liz J born & raised in southern NJ