FOREWORD

As a child I can remember hearing stories of distant relatives who lived on far away lands. Of course my imagination ran wild with images of what these people were like and what their land must be like. As I grew up I realized that these distant relatives in many cases were the childhood friends of my parents and the far away lands were small Illinois towns less than an hours drive away.

My interest and wonder in who my ancestors and long lost cousins are has never really waned. I thank my mother for her interest and willingness to share her findings and stories with me as I have grown. My mother has been collecting information on our family history for as long as I can remember. In the early years there was little organization to the process. The day to day issues of taking care of her immediate family had to be dealt with first.

Now that my sister and I have left the fold, and with the passing of my father, my mother has entered a new chapter in her life. Almost a decade ago I was able to convince my mother that it would make sense for her to purchase a laptop computer. I told her that the primary reason was so that she could send me E-Mail, and we could keep in touch. The secondary reason was that she could begin putting all of her genealogical information in the computer and begin getting organized. Of course my suggestion was somewhat self serving. I would have a better way of keeping in touch with my mother since we were six hours away from each other and I would give her a reason to organize all of the information that I knew that I would never be able to organize by myself.

Over the last six years my mother and I have been on a quest of sorts. My mother has been collecting additional genealogical data to fill in some of the big holes that we had and has been inputting the information into her computer. As of this date, there are records for almost 10,000 people in our genealogical database. Over half of these are relations on our Brink side alone.

While my mother has been taking a traditional approach to her research, I have been looking to use today's technology. Over just the last couple of years, the Internet has become an increasingly valuable resource as more and more genealogical databases go on-line and more and more families make their own information available. Our family will be following that path as well as I am in the process of putting together our own family history page on the Internet. The hope is that there will be other Brinks who are trying to find their histories and will be able to link in with us. An example is one individual whose Brink heritage points to the Quincy, Illinois area. The connection with us seems to go all the way back to Westphalia, Germany. We have not found a connection yet, but are hoping that we may have found a whole new branch of our family which has a connection to us from before the time we came to America.

There is another whole branch of Brinks in the North Prairie, Huegely, New Minden, Hoyleton area. My mother was always told we were not related to them. We are now close to making the connection which includes Bob Brink who lives near Irvington, Illinois.

The goal for this current book has been to simply present as much of our information as possible. The last time that an effort like this was done, Minnie Brink Ludwig put together a book for the 100th anniversary of the Brinks arriving in the states. You can find her book as one of the sections included here.

To be fair, most of the information presented in this book is rather dry. There is not much excitement in looking at lists of how six thousand people are interrelated. Our goal from now on will focus more on the bibliographical side of the Brinks. Each one of the individuals listed here represents a person who had an interesting life. What we would like to be able to collect for the next version of the book are the stories and histories of the people listed. At that point our family history will become more valuable and have more meaning as we read stories of how our ancestors lived and what interests that they had. Many of our distant relatives of course will not be able to have their stories told, however our more recent relatives can have their stories told by themselves or you. It is our hope that we can collect stories and histories from every Brink that reads this book. If we can do that, then we will really have something. We have included as an appendix, information on how you can add to the information or make corrections to this book.

Once again I want to thank my mother for sparking my interests in our family history and for taking all the time and effort that she has put into this project. Even if no one else finds it of value, I will enjoy it and cherish it for years to come. Thanks Mom.

Ron Gines

E-Mail me at Ron_Gines@connexusinc.com

Site Hosted by CONNEXUS, Inc.

Last modified: 06/07/1998

Copyright © 1998 by Ron Gines