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.

Besides adding more people, I've also included more information about the persons who were already in the database. I have now imported my own 'information' fields as well, which may include information about witnesses, land ownerships or other details. For many families, I have includes pages and pages of transcribed records. All of this additional information is in Dutch but since this database is being used by Dutch people as well I thought to include it anyway since it contains so much additional details.

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.

In the days before the Civil Registration forced everyone to stick to a surname, people in the eastern part of the Netherlands were named after the farm they lived at. You can still see that in the surnames today: Derk te Kolste, Piet te Lintum, Gerrit Jan Hoitink, etc. Since the surname might change every time a person moved, this sometimes offers difficulties in tracing your ancestors. There are some strategies to help you solve those name puzzles.

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.

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

The capital of Zeeland is Middelburg. Other larger towns are:

• Vlissingen
• Goes
• Terneuzen

The Beij family emigrated from Leiderdorp, Zuid-Holland to the United States in 1860 and settled in Paterson, NJ. Miss Beij wrote back to her old neighbors in the Netherlands. This letter still exists today. Unfortunately, it is not known (yet) who this family is.

One group of emigrants in the 18th century is known as the Pennsylvania Dutch. But did you know they weren't Dutch at all? Most Pennsylvania dutch are actually German or Swiss. But even though their ancestors were not from the Netherlands, many Pennsylvania Dutch used Dutch ports to travel to the United States so there is a Dutch connection.