Not much point in email. I hardly ever look at the site box. Better to use the feed-back form below which goes to my personal box (but I only look at that really when I'm expecting email and often delete all content if it's built up).
Please don't send me encrypted messages (I always ignore them).
Our picture postcard view heading each page is of Amsoldingen in canton Berne, Switzerland. My great-great-something grandfather Samuel Hirsig (1727 - > 1767) was a persecuted Swiss anabaptist from Amsoldingen who settled in Breda, Holland (apparently joining a Swiss regiment, curious for an anabaptist) with his wife Catherina Luginbuhl (1725 - 1797) from Grosshöchstetten in canton Thun. His son Jacobus Christiaan Hirschig (1767 - 1818) became a minister in the Dutch Reformed Church and his descendents were variously classicists, rectors, poets, physicians, civil engineers, artists, financiers, artillery officers, playboys and latterly bodhisattvas (sez I). Needless to say I should be very happy indeed to hear from anyone related to these families: there were marriages into the Mauve (the artist Anton Mauve) and de Lange (of Alkmaar) families. The artist in the family incidentally was the minor Dutch artist Anton Hirschig (1867 - 1939) who was lodging with Vincent van Gogh in Auvers, France at the time of Vincent's death and may have sketched Vincent's last portrait. He gets transsexed into Antonia Hirschig (his sister) in Scheen's lexicon, the standard reference work for Dutch artists of the period, and I have given up trying to get that corrected.
My postal address is
William Boyd
2 Y Glyn
Ffordd Clynnog
Penygroes
Gwynedd LL54 6NP
UK
and I always endeavour to reply to hand-written letters.
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