Groningen is a province in the North-East of the Netherlands. On the east it borders on Germany, on the west on Friesland, on the south on Drenthe and on the north on the North Sea.

The capital of Groningen is also called Groningen, sometimes called Groningen stad (Groningen city) to make the distinction clear.

The largest towns in Groningen are:

• Groningen
• Hoogezand-Sappemeer
• Veendam
• Winschoten
• Delfzijl

Genealogy in Groningen

Before 1811, most people in Groningen did not use any last names but used patronymics instead. If someone was called Bonne and his father was called Jan, he would be called Bonne Jans.

A rich source of information for Groningen before 1811 are the marriage contracts that were often drawn up. The marriage contracts often list a long list of relatives of the bride and groom te be. They can be found at the provincial archives, the Groninger Archieven. Some marriage contracts are available online. Check the Groningen section of the Digital Resources website for more information.

Most of the genealogical information for Groningen for the nineteenth century can be found in Genlias. Background information can also be found at the website of the Groninger Archieven.

Emigration from Groningen

At the end of the 19th century, the crops were very poor in Groningen. That's one of the reasons why many people emigrated to the United States. Most up them ended up around the Great Lakes, predominantly in Michigan.

Online images

There are a few online sources for images of Groningen:

• Groningen atlas of about 1865-1870. This atlas includes both a map of the entire province and detailed maps of all the municipalities.

Map of Groningen, about 1865.

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.

Groningen is a province in the North-East of the Netherlands. On the east it borders on Germany, on the west on Friesland, on the south on Drenthe and on the north on the North Sea.

The capital of Groningen is also called Groningen, sometimes called Groningen stad (Groningen city) to make the distinction clear.

The largest towns in Groningen are:

• Groningen
• Hoogezand-Sappemeer
• Veendam
• Winschoten
• Delfzijl

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.