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Yvette's Dutch Genealogy Homepage  
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Introduction

This site helps people of Dutch descent research their Dutch ancestors.

Many articles explain the research opportunities in the Netherlands, both offline and online. Other articles give background information about Dutch history in general and emigration in particular. Also, some primary sources you can use for your research are provided. Special attention is given to online research, with many links to useful websites.

View of New York, then known as New Amsterdam
View of New Amsterdam, 1664

 
The family of Pieter Oebeles Viersen
This is the first of a series of 12 articles about emigrants from the Frisian municipality of Dantumadeel, who settled in Pella, Iowa. This article was written by Kor Postma and translated by Thys de Jong.
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New Dutch genealogy store

AmazonI'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.

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15th anniversary of Yvette's Dutch Genealogy Homepage
fireworksIt was about 15 years ago that I started this website. It was during my second trimester in University. All the computer science students were given internet access. We had discovered that we could place web pages on our personal internet accounts which would show up on the World Wide Web. I don't know the exact date but it must have been towards the end of 1993 or early in 1994. So I'm celebrating 15 years of Yvette's Dutch Genealogy Homepage today! 
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Setting up an image bank

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).

 
Nationaal Archief emigration photos on Flickr

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.

Emigranten

 
Updated database

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.

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Patronymics

'Patronymic' literally means 'father's name'. It means that someone calls himself after his father, for example a son of Jan would call himself 'Jansen'. This is similar to the English name 'Johnson'.

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Church records

For the seventeenth and eighteenth century, church records provide the most complete records for genealogical research. The church recorded the baptisms, marriages and burials of their members. Many of those records have survived to this day.

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Friesland

Friesland is one of the northern provinces in the Netherlands. It borders on the province of Groningen in the east, Drenthe and Overijssel in the South, the IJsselmeer in the west and the North Sea in the north.

The capital city of Friesland is Leeuwarden. The largest towns are:

  • Dokkum
  • Sneek
  • Bolsward
  • Drachten
  • Heerenveen
  • Wolvega
  • Franeker
  • Harlingen
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Geerlings, Gerrit and Aaltien de Vries

Gerrit Geerlings was a member of the Secession in the Netherlands and involved in the creation of many new Seceder churches. He emigrated to the United States together with his entire family of seven children. Unfortunately, they ended up on the vessel Phoenix which took them across the Great Lakes but perished off the shores of Sheboygan. The Geerlings family was one of the luckiest (or should we say, "least unlucky") families on board, because only two of the children were lost while most other families had perished entirely.

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New Netherlands

The first larger emigration wave from the Netherlands took place in the seventeenth century. A new colony was established in the Americas, which was called the New Netherlands. After a rough start, this colony attracted emigrants from all over Europe.

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