About the author of this website.

Following requests to not hide myself, here is a little about me.

My name is Jan Dam Julius Backer Dirks, Jules or Jul for short. I was born in 1957 in Boksburg, South Africa, as a small nugget of gold over the deepest gold mine in the World (or so my mother told me when I was a child).

We moved to Paris, France, when I was about three and I spent most of my happy childhood running around there. Aged 9 we moved to Hamburg, Germany, where I spent my teenage years until I went to London, England, for University.

I have lived in England ever since. I live in Lymington, Hampshire, with my lovely wife Mel and my son Michael, born 2003 (Michael is one of the youngest Backer Dirks in the World, and probably one of the most important ones too).

Practically all the details on this web site were researched by my father, Rudolf Backer Dirks, and handed to me in the form of paper documents. I know very little about their source. However, don't let this deter you from asking me questions. Sadly my father died in 2011 but I am more than happy to search for answers through the papers I have. At the moment everything is still in a bit of a muddle somewhere in one of eight crates of papers and photos I inherited, but I hope to slowly work my way through them. There is lots of information that is not yet published on this website. By the way, there is a nice story about how my father's interest in family history was kindled back in the 1940's, if you would like to know...

It would give me great pleasure to hear from anyone visiting this site. If you would like further information about this site, or you would like to report an error or missing details then please contact me by clicking on the link below. I am fluent in French, German, Dutch and English, and I know a little Spanish, so you can e-mail in any of those languages.

Click here to send an e-mail Jules Backer Dirks

N.B. If your you cannot click on the above link to e-mail me then this is because your computer is blocking the link. You can either tell your computer to "allow blocked content" on this page or you can get my e-mail address from the line below by removing all the embedded spaces:-

j u l e s b d @ b t i n t e r n e t . c o m

Sorry about this palaver, but this is to protect me from receiving hundreds of unwanted spam e-mails.