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.

Overview

Personal index cards were introduced in 1938 to replace the old family-based registration. The municipalities kept personal index cards for every inhabitant. If a person moved to another municipality, his index card was forwarded there. It can be thought of as an 'administrative twin' that follows you around your entire life.

A personal index card includes the following information about a person:

• First name(s)
• Last name
• Date and place of birth
• Date and place of death
• Information about the parents (full names, dates and places of birth)
• Religion (not public)
• Addresses (public if person died at least 20 years ago)
• Information about spouses (full names, dates and places of birth and marriage, whether the marriage ended by death or divorce)
• Information about children (full names, dates and places of birth and death. Sometimes not all children are mentioned, if the children had already moved out before 1938 they are often not listed on their parents' cards).

In 1994, the personal index cards were replaced by the municipal basic administration, that registers the same information in digital form.

Ordering personal index cards

The personal index cards from 1938 onwards are not public to protect the privacy of living people. After a person dies, his or her card or record from the municipal basic administration is sent for processing to the Central Bureau of Statistics. When they are done with it, it is sent on to the Central Bureau of Genealogy (CBG). Usually, it takes around two years for the cards to become available at the CBG.

Photocopies can be ordered from the CBG for a fee. To order a photocopy, write a letter (by regular mail only) to 

Centraal Bureau voor Genealogie
Postbus 11755
2502 AT Den Haag

For each person you're requesting an index card for, list the following information:

• First and last names, as accurately and completely as possible
• The birth date and place
• Year and if possible the date of death
• Any other information like information about the spouse (names, birth and death places)

If you don't know all of this information that's no problem as long as there is enough the identify the person. If the information is unclear, a research fee might be charged. When ordering more than 1 card, list the people in alphabetical order.

Costs are around € 3.30 per index card with a minimum of € 4.90 per order. When ordering from abroad, additional bank transfer costs and postage fees will be incurred. If you have any questions, contact the CBG at This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it , or http://www.cbg.nl.

There is no way to order copies of personal index cards of people who are still alive, because that would violate their privacy.

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.

'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'.

Census records can be a great source of information because they list all the inhabitants of a house, usually one or more families together with their domestic staff. Since 1850, the Dutch census records form a continuous registration where you can find who lived where at all times.

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

This is the second in 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.

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.