Greetings from New Zealand!
I am a first-generation New Zealander on my father's line. My father arrived in New Zealand from the Netherlands circa 1952. He spent the best part of 50 years tracing his direct line of descent from the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia) through the Netherlands to medieval Portugal.
On my mother's line of descent, my earliest ancestor to arrive in New Zealand was my second great grandfather John Butler, who arrived in New Zealand from the United Kingdom in the mid to late 19th century.
My father Armand Mendes da Costa (1926-2009) started researching his family genealogy in 1950 and made a number of visits around the world where our family had lived, including France, the Netherlands, Portugal, and the UK, visiting medieval graveyards and family burial plots, national archives, museums, talking to family members and historians alike in order to fill his quest. (As you had to do in the days before the Internet.) As a result he became acknowledged as a leading world resource on this notable Sephardic family.
Dad's family is a rather small but well known family originating from Trancoso, Portugal, with a rich and very interesting history in England and Holland in particular. It had several prominent members in the community and their exploits and place in society have been well recorded by eminent British historians, both in the present as well as in the past.
In the early 1990's Dad had completed the bulk of the family's branches in England, Holland, Belgium, France, USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and the Argentine, covering many hundreds of individuals from the 15th century until recent decades. In the 2000's Dad's health declined to the point where it was no longer possible for him to continue, and I offered to help him make the fruits of his research available to others.
In the early 2000's I began to make available online (on my private website; now archived) as much information as possible regarding descendants of this family line and to make available the results of Dad's 50 years of painstaking research for family members and genealogists alike.
I have also started to share much of Dad's research and other family connections on Geni.com [1] and since discovering WikiTree am keen to make it available here also.
I have also developed a growing interest in the family tree on my maternal grandfather's side, and am keen to assist any with what information I have at hand or am able to source.
Personal and family commitments prevent me making this a regular pastime, but I am keen to share what I have as I have opportunity.
Kind regards
Andre Mendes da Costa
