The Yvette behind Yvette's Dutch Genealogy Homepage is Yvette Hoitink, a Dutch amateur genealogist with an interest in emigration research. The information on this website represent her personal views and do not reflect the opinions of her company or employers.

Yvette became interested in genealogy at the age of 14 and has been doing it ever since. Her paternal ancestors come from the eastern part of Gelderland, mainly from Winterswijk, Aalten, Bredevoort and Dinxperlo. Her maternal ancestors come from Noord-Brabant (the area around Breda and Tilburg) and Zeeland (western Zeeuws-Vlaanderen).

In 1993, Yvette started studying computer science and management studies at the University of Twente. Because her faculty provided internet access for students, Yvette became one of the first Dutch people to have her own website: Yvette's Dutch Genealogy Homepage. Because there were hardly any people outside the United States online, the website was focused on Americans with Dutch ancestors. That has remained the focus ever since.

Using the internet, Yvette got in touch with Mary Risseeuw and other descendants of 19th century emigrants from the Netherlands. This sparked her interest and she started researching why those people left the Netherlands and where they ended up.

As a result of this, Yvette attended the sesquicentennial commemoration of the Phoenix disaster in 1997. The Phoenix perished on Lake Michigan in 1847, carrying mainly Dutch emigrants. Yvette researched the backgrounds of these passengers. Researchers in the United States, including Ione Heinen and Mary Risseeuw, researched what became of the survivors.

For the last nine years, Yvette has run a computer company together with her boyfriend. The company, Heritas, is aimed at historical applications of information technology. Because of her work, Yvette has been involved in many websites that are related to genealogy like Genlias, Archivenet, the Dutch National Archives, the Overijssel Historical Centre, etc. Since March 2006, Yvette works as a ICT consultant and project manager for the National Archives in The Hague. Yvette was also involved in creating the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines so people with disabilities can access online information.

Because of her knowledge of historical applications of information technology, Yvette gives lectures and workshop on using the internet for genealogy. In 2002, she wrote a book on this subject together with her friend Jeroen van Luin which was published by the Central Bureau of Genealogy in The Hague. A revised edition was published in 2007.

Yvette's own research focuses on the following areas:

• Population reconstruction of Winterswijk prior to 1811. This database is available online.
• Emigration from Winterswijk in the 19th century, with the focus on finding out who left and where they ended up. The ancestors of the emigrants are researched as well, to tie in with the population reconstruction of Winterswijk (see the above database).
• Researching her own ancestors both in male and female lines.
• Reconstructing the population of Bredevoort in the seventeenth century. She was able to pinpoint the location of the house of Hendrickje Stoffels. She was not only mistress of the famous painter Rembrandt van Rijn but also a sister of an ancestor of Yvette. See her Dutch site Heerlijkheid Bredevoort.
  
• Reconstructing the population of Sint Anna ter Muiden to determine who lived where prior to 1832. See her Dutch website Sint Anna ter Muiden.
  

Last week, my friend Mary Risseeuw from Sheboygan Falls, Wisconsin and I gave a presentation at the International Congress for genealogical and heraldic Sciences in Maastricht. The title was "We're all fresh and healthy. Emigration from the Netherlands to the United States in the 19th century. The slides are now available online.

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.

'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'.

For the nineteenth and twentieth century, the civil registration is the primary genealogical resource. All the births, marriages and deaths (BMD) were recorded. Usually, only using the civil registration you can compile a 'backbone' of a pedigree that goes back to the late 1700's.

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

Jan Antonie Boerrigter emigrated to the United States in 1910 from Overijssel. Almost half a century later, he wrote to his aunt and uncle in the Netherlands. He shares much information about his family and is curious about the Netherlands.

After World War II was over, many people wanted to start a new life across the ocean. Five years of war had destroyed the Dutch economy, and it would take years to recover. In the late 1940s and early 1950s, many Dutch people emigrated to Australia, Canada and the United States.