About Us - WorldCastleVacations

Some are to the manor born, we storybook you there.

Founded in 2021, we built this historically-themed, castle-inspired travel directory to go beyond traditional travel whereby anyone anywhere is welcomed to become "Lord of the Manor", "Governor of the Fort", and "King or Queen of the Castle" on their next travel adventure. Our mission is to promote unique hospitality venues and tourism while actively championing sustainability, castle restoration, cultural and historic property preservation and literacy.

Jan Elizabeth Landwehr

Jan is a 13th generation American-descendant of the First European Settlers in North America-specifically New England and the Mid-Atlantic states-Cambridge, Massachusetts, (1631); Wethersfield, CT (1634); New Haven, CT 1638); Stamford, Connecticut (1640); Southold & Southampton, Long Island, New York (1640); Middletown & Woodbridge, New Jersey (1664); Newark, New Jersey (1666); Germantown, Pennsylvania (1683) and Co-Founders of the Universities of Harvard and Yale and Clare College and Queens’ College at the University of Cambridge. Just as importantly, Jan is the descendant of the First Castle Builders in Europe ranging from England, Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland, and Republic of Ireland to Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, and Spain eastwards to Poland, Ukraine, and Jordan in the Middle East.

Her medieval forebears also include some of the greatest knights of the Middle Ages including William Marshal, (1146- 1219), Earl of Pembroke, Jousting Champion, Magna Carta Negotiator, Regent of England, Author of the Charter of the Forest (1217) and Advisor to Five Plantagenet Kings - And - El Cid, the 'Champion', (1043-1099), Castilian Military Leader and National Folk Hero of Medieval Spain as well as a few Knight Templars, Troubadours and Poets, notable English Medieval Lawyers including the Eponymous Founder of Gray’s Inn. Justiciars, and Sheriffs, and Founding Knights of the Garter.

But in terms of castle-building, it is Jan’s 31st great-grandfather, Fulk III ‘the Black’, Count of Anjou, (970-1040), who stands out the most. It is estimated that Fulk constructed approximately 100 castles as well as abbeys throughout the Loire Valley in what is now France.

Jan holds undergraduate degrees in Environmental Engineering and Environmental Sciences and a master's degree in Finance and Investments.

John Randolph Wathen

President of Customer Service Relations

John is an 11th generation American - a descendant of the First European Settlers of the Southern United States of America, (Virginia, Maryland, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Tennessee, Arkansas and Texas) including frontiersmen, lawyers, medical doctors, and merchants and many a Castle Builder in England and France. John holds an undergraduate degree in Anthropology and his occupational specialties are Telemarketing, Business and Development and Mergers and Acquisitions. Most recently, it has been discovered that John has some New England ancestry including John Prescott, Founding Father of Lancaster, MA; William ‘School Teacher’ Andrews, Founding Father of Hartford, CT; and Capt. John Tinker, a prominent business agent for the Winthrop family and a magistrate in New London, CT. Both John Wathen and William R. Barnes, (Co-Founder of Barnes & Noble Bookstore back in 1917 in New York City) are eighth cousins – descendants of William ‘School Teacher’ Andrews and Jan Landwehr is effectively, John’s 10th cousin twice over through their shared Tinker and Merwin family connections from Windsor, England.