I've just added a Dutch genealogy store to the site. In this store, visitors can buy books, DVDs and prints about Dutch genealogy, history and culture. I've selected publications that I think would benefit somebody researching his Dutch roots. The store is powered by Amazon. This website receives a commission for all sales, enabling this website to remain free.

In 2007, I wrote a guide on how to set up image banks. The aim of the guide is to share best practices in creating online access to collections of images.  

The project was an initiative of the Taskforce Digital Accessibility of Archives (Taskforce Archieven) in the Netherlands. We formed a project group, consisting of image bank specialist from several archives in the Netherlands. I was involved as project manager and author of the guide. 

The Dutch National Archives are involved in a project to share knowledge with their Croatian counterparts. As part of this program, the guide was translated into English and then into Croatian. I thought visitors of this website might also be interested in this guide, so I put the English version here as well. The guide is available under a Creative Commons license, so feel free to share the document with others.

Download 'Setting up an image bank' (PDF, 381 KB).

The Nationaal Archief, the National Archives of the Netherlands, has now joined Flickr the Commons. Like the Library of Congres, the Nationaal Archief is now using Flickr as a means to create wider access to the photo collection and ask the visitors for help in describing the collection. The first collections include a set of pictures of emigrants.

I've just updated the genealogical database. It now includes about 42,500 people and their families. This includes almost 3,200 emigrants from the eastern part of the Achterhoek who emigrated to the United States in the nineteenth century. This is just the tip of the iceberg and is by no means complete. I did enter all of the Winterswijk emigrants I could find in the period 1840-1880, often with their ancestors as well.

Many Dutch people took American names when they came to the US. Some common combinations are listed here. All of these combinations have been found in actual documents, even though the translations aren't always what you would expect.

Personal information cards were used from 1938 to keep track of who lived where. It is a part of the population registration.

Personal index cards are a great source of information for recent research because they cover the period from 1938 onwards. Copies of personal index cards of deceased people can be ordered for a fee.

Zuid-Holland is a province in the west of the Netherlands. It borders on Utrecht and Gelderland in the east, Noord-Brabant and Zeeland in the south, the North Sea in the west and Noord-Holland in the north.

The capital city of Zuid-Holland is The Hague (In Dutch Den Haag or 's-Gravenhage). Other large towns are:

• Rotterdam
• Leiden
• Dordrecht
• Gouda
• Delft

In the middle of the nineteenth century, conditions in Europe were poor. Crops were failling all over Europe and many people hardly made enough money to feed their families. For this reason, many people decided to emigrate to the United States, where farmland was plenty and people hoped they could begin a new life. In the Netherlands, some people also had religious reasons to emigrate. The had seceded from the Dutch Reformed Church and were being oppressed by the goverment. The United States offered to them not only better economic prospects, but also the chance to celebrate their religion as they saw fit.