Keyserlingk.info website about to reach 30 million hits.

If you look at the bottom right of the home page of family website, Keyserlingk.info, you will see the small counter. It is about to hit 30 million. I have no idea of how many are individual visitors to the site as the counter includes any time the site is opened by people and bots. Still it is a big number for a family site. When I set the site up some 15 years ago, I set 3 important policies: A. Include female and male members I insisted on including the families of all our Keyserlingk aunts, sisters and daughters. This went against the rules and regulations of the Baltic and other Noble Family organizations who ignore the females of our families because of their own fixed archaic middle-age rules. This results in all the families of women being ignored in the documentation and sites they may administer. Half of all families are thus ignored with no information being shown. I never supported this policy and fought and lost my battles on this matter with the Baltic Nobility Organization many years ago. I decided the families of the women of our families (such as my own daughters and nieces) are integral parts of our families and that they are carrying as much Keyserlingk DNA as our males. For this, I got into hot water with the Baltic Nobility organization. The result, however. is that our Keyserlingk.info site shows the families of our aunts, sisters and daughters allowing it to show all of our nephews, nieces and grand (and some great grand) children. As the site goes back to the 13th century, there are now over 5000 individual relatives carried on the site,  of which I estimate about 2000 are actually living relatives.  I am not sure how many of you were aware that you had about 2000 living aunts, uncles, nephews and nieces.   B. Give access to the site to anyone interested in genealogy and Keyserlingk. Again, contrary to the Baltic Nobility organization regulations, I decided to make the site open to others who may be looking for a connection to our families or who were just curious to learn more about the Keyserlingk family. At the same time, I protected the personal information of members by limiting access to that information to family members with IDs and passwords. This personal information allows family members to connect by email or phone which I think is important to build family relationships. It is also fun and allows people traveling or just cruising the site to contact other Keyserlingk relatives living in some 23 countries around the world. C. Allow members with family credentials to update site information. This policy has allowed the site to be updated by any of the family members with the proper access credentials. Given that there are over 2000 living members on the site, there was no way I could keep the site updated. It has worked as many members have taken on the task of keeping their family information up to date. Check your own family info to see if it is up to date. Maybe you could take on the task. I can tell you that there has not been a single case of a member abusing of this policy since the site was set up. The greatest result of these 3 policies has been that we have discovered our relations to several families we never knew were related because their mothers or grandmothers had been totally ignored by the Baltic Nobility organization on the grounds they were females (and in one case, because they were love children). I have had the pleasure to meet some of these new families such as the Crawfords in New York, the Glazovskys in Moscow and Vienna and the Schirinsky-Schikhmatoffs in Paris and in Corsica. I have also met many relatives during my travels to places such as Germany, France, Chile, South Africa, Madagascar, Reunion, Switzerland, Russia, China, USA, Canada, Finland, Austria, Belgium and Turkey. And all these visits have been fun and interesting as all our relatives are great people, full of family stories, family history and family folklore. Try it, you will like it. I offer this information to show you how you can enjoy the site. I suggest you cruise around the site. You will be surprised at how much family history it contains, including books, articles and pictures. Cheers Sander

By:    Friday, July 19, 2024

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