User story: From button-maker to Russian noble

This story was sent to us by Maarten Thomas v. Balluseck, whose passion for genealogy awoke at a family reunion. Having reconstructed his family's history back to the 18th century, he is well placed to share some of the discoveries he made about the roles his ancestors played in history:

I have been interested in my family's history for quite some time, but I really started my investigation after a family day, two years ago at my grandparents'. There were about 78 people there (the entire Dutch line of my family), but I knew almost none of them, so I met a lot of what appeared-to-be aunts and uncles I had never seen before. When everybody was present, one of the uncles I just met told us the story of the founder of my family, Fedor Andrejewicz Balluseck, who went to St. Petersburg and became the personal doctor of Prince Friedrich Karl Eugen Paul Ludwig von Wuerttemberg.

Andreas Friedrich (in Russian: Fedor Andrejewicz) von Balluseck was born in Berlin as the son of a button-maker. In 1809, he finished his medical studies in St. Petersburg and became a doctor in the poorhouse of the city. When Napoleon invaded the Russian Empire in 1812, all the medics had to serve in the Russian army. In that role he did an outstanding job and was rewarded for his bravery with an order of St. Vladimir. This order provided Russian hereditary nobility.

So as he was a Russian nobleman he got a seat in the Chancellery in 1822. Later on in his life, he moved to the German city of Bad-Carlsruhe (now Pokoj, Poland). At that time, Bad-Carlsruhe was the residence of the Dukes "von Wurttemberg-Oels." That is where he met prince Friedrich Karl Eugen Paul Ludwig von Wurttemberg. They were of the almost same age, both part Russian and part German, both rewarded noblemen, and both had served in the Russian army during the war of 1812, against Napoleon. The v. Ballusecks and v. Wurttembergs became very close friends, and, because of his medical profession, he served the prince in his last years as his personal doctor. Andreas Friedrich Balluseck died in 1849 in Bad-Carlsruhe; Prince Eugen von Wurttemberg died in 1857, also in Bad-Carlsruhe.

So this is the story my uncle shared. It was a fascinating story but very hard to understand because of the large number of names and dates he used to explain how this man is related to us. So, when he was done, I asked him to explain the whole story to me again. And again it was very hard to understand, so I thought: I will create an interactive family tree in which every member of my family can find their ancestors.

I started by buying the Hei-Hu edition of the Dutch Nobility Book, in which I found some ancestors. Than I started collecting information from the internet. There I found a lot of useful information and many ancestors that were not in the Nobility Book. I also visited the Dutch center for genealogy and the High-Counsel of Nobility in Den Haag with an acquaintance of mine. There I found information in the German Nobility Books about my German family and ancestors. I also found some pictures of ancestors I could use.

The research I have done indicates the first "Balluseck" in my family tree was born in 1743 in Hungary (now Slovakia). Because my family is from all over the world, it was very hard to collect information. I had to search information in interactive databases from countries such as Russia, Germany, Indonesia and more. The second son of Andreas Friedrich von Balluseck, Felix von Balluseck moved, as many German people did, in 1862, from Bad-Carlsruhe to the Dutch East Indies where he became a member of the general staff of the Dutch colonial army. There he married the illegitimate daughter of Dirk Wolter Jacob Carel, Baron of Lynden, and founded the Dutch line of my family. The other two sons of Andreas Friedrich von Balluseck that I found stayed in Germany and founded the other two (German) lines of my family. I have information on the name and know the family "Balluseck" still exists in Russia, but I do not know where they live or how they are related, so I did not manage to contact them yet. I still haven't got all the information from Germany and Russia because of the strict rules of those countries' archives.

I have a sizeable tree of 358 people, and I personally added all of them to the family site. The Smart Matches I received through MyHeritage were very useful for my research. I added about 8 people by using the information from them. Also, some relatives I met at the reunion a few years ago were very interested in my "project" (as they called it). Now they are members of my family site on MyHeritage. Most of them are indeed older family members, but my project awoke something in my uncle. He has become a very active member now and has provided a lot of information to me that his father had collected. Sometimes the other family members on my website have also provided information and pictures for my family tree.

By knowing how everyone is related, my webpage has brought the family closer together. We organize reunions now. We don't hesitate any more to call each other. The barrier formed by not knowing each other has crumbled and made it easier to connect now that we know how we are related.

I even discovered another line of Dutch "von Ballusecks" that the relatives present at the family day did not know of. So I traced their phone numbers and called them. It was a very strange conversation, on a "Hey, I'm your cousin"-basis, since, after all, they were very pleasantly surprised by my call. I invited them to our family reunion next year. And, as I am writing a little book about the family's history and genealogy, MyHeritage will be involved in this reunion.