Speculation

The following speculative ideas provide material specific to finding documentation linking the pedigrees of the DNA participants to the Johannes Brouwer Family.

Introduction: What is the role of conjecture, intuition, and speculation in genealogy?  Arguments based  explicitly on appeal to intuition rarely make an appearance in published genealogical papers, but they have usually provided the direction from which solid evidence is later obtained. In this section I present some speculative positions that bear on the problems of establishing family lines descending from Johannes Brouwer.

Clearly there are a lot of details to fill in right now and there is a lot of hand waving involved, but I  start with what I think are some plausible ideas and will let future data eliminate mistaken paths. The purpose is to provide hints and guidance as to where researchers might profitably search for answers. We should keep an open mind to the possibilities as we gather more data, both in the form of paper trail documentation and DNA test results, to determine the correct ancestry.

I am not claiming that verbal hand waving is genealogy; one can “prove” the most blatant nonsense with erudite hand waving, and in the end, genealogy requires facts and primary documentation that one can check and evaluate for oneself. However, it is often useful to make conjectures, narrow the options, and focus the research in productive directions to produce new data suggested by speculative arguments. Hopefully we will be able to narrow down, on the basis of that new data, which, if any, of the versions suggested below correctly describe the lines of descent.

For that reason, I welcome comments, criticisms, and corrections -- that is how genealogy evolves. You can reach me at brouwerdna@mac.com.

Speculations Index:

1) Concerning linking John Brewer (b. ca. 1733, m. Elsie Lewis (sometimes said to be Elsie Dunbar with no verification) to Johannes Brouwer of Flatlands..... Read More Here

        NOTE: A Beta version conclusion 9/11/2008.  In software development a beta test version works, more or less, but comes with no guarantees.  There are bugs, and missing features to be expected.  Similarly, from the information that follows below, and until further information is found, I am proposing the best fit beta version of the link is via speculation ii) John4 (Jan3, Pieter2, Johannes 1).

2) Concerning linking David Brewer (b. ca, 1762 New Jersey, m. Euphemia Warner ) to Johannes Brouwer -- possible connection via Derck2 Brouwer(Johannes1) .... Read More Here

Future conjectures will be appended in page updates to come.

Some examples of which are:

a) Concerning linking the Olsen/Embody/Rose descendants to Johannes Brouwer -- a future link, to be added

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