Weeast Family Genealogy Website

Welcome to the Weeast Genealogy Website

This website launched in April 2018 with a mission to provide a central location for all Weeast families to learn about their ancestors and collaborate on filling in the gaps. This site can also serve as a place to advertise upcoming family reunions, solicit information from other family members, or share documents and photos related to each branch of the large family tree.

The blog posts will initially include what I have learned over the last 25 years and highlight certain families or events that prove important or interesting. The main page displays the last 3 Blog. To see all blogs, select Blogs from the main menu.

The Research section will contain hundreds of documents to download, such as census images, birth, marriage, and death records (available to the public), family photos, newspaper clippings, links to genealogy sites and resources, and more.

Art Weeast

About My Research

My research approach has primarily focused on the paternal (father line) members of the Weast / Weeast families. Where each male left and started their own family, I would follow that line as long as I could. If a daughter married, I would occasionally capture the husband’s name but nothing else; I did not capture their children. My primary goal was to go back as far as I could to hopefully determine the origin of the name. My research tends to end with the Weeast families in the 1940 Census, although there are some families that go beyond that based on contributions from other family members or other sources. In my case, I stopped at the Ford Weeast family (my grandfather/grandmother) and their children. I have not detailed out their children’s families; my father’s family, or the families of my aunts and uncle. I want to leave this to their children or future generations to complete.

There are 30 Family Groups. Each Family Group has a Zip (compressed) file that contains the folders and files for birth/marriage/death/census records, and other documents such as newspaper articles, Social Security applications, WWI and WWII Registration Cards, etc.; approximately 550 files in total. Feel free to download the files for your direct ancestors to get a deeper understanding of your family’s past. If you find incorrect or missing information, please let me know.

Family Groups – documents & photos (very few so far) by each family group

The following links will direct you to other research pages:

Census Records – Federal and State Census information/links
Genealogy Links – useful links for New Jersey

Coming in the future:

Employers – Major employers of the various Weast/Weeast families
Genealogy Books & More – templates, examples and written Weeast genealogies
Research Tools – information on a collection of free and paid tools

Art Weeast

In 1994 the internet was in its infancy and did not have a lot of information yet. When taking my nephews to a computer store to buy a game, I came across a box that said something like “1 Million Names, Discover Your Roots.” I thought “Wow, maybe I can find out who my ancestors are and where we came from.” As it turns out, I learned very little from the information on the CD; it was from the Social Security Death Index and at that time there were only eight Weeast listed. But other information on the CD gave hints as to where else to look for genealogical information, and I was hooked. I spent the next year ordering microfilm from the LDS Family History Centers and manually searched Federal Census records from 1850 to 1920 (latest available Census at that time); a very time-consuming process.

After that first exhausting year, life got in the way and I would only periodically look for more information. I have continued adding to the collection and information in the genealogy database I started. Today, much of this information and more is indexed and available from the comforts of your home.

In 2018, as I am nearing retirement, I think I have figured out a way to disseminate the knowledge and resources in a meaningful way through this website and make my genealogy database accessible to verifiable family members.

Just so you know, I don’t do Facebook. Surprising for someone who has spent most of his career in technology. I have a Facebook account (with nothing on it) so I can see my daughter’s extensive posts on her account.

Why I don’t do Facebook: I realized early on that Facebook made money by selling ads and collecting personal information, so I was not interested in giving away that information. As we have all realized recently, the scope of the information collected goes well beyond what most thought.

I can be reached by using the Contact Us form on this site. My wife, Vickie, and I live in Aurora, Colorado (next to Denver if you were wondering).

We appreciate your feedback, your questions and your curiosity!