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

Genealogy in Zuid-Holland

Most people in Zuid-Holland were using fixed surnames long before the civil registration made this mandatory. Some regions used patronymics in addition to the surname.

Many records of Zuid-Holland are kept by the National Archives, which also functions as the provincial archive of Zuid-Holland. The larger municipalities, like The Hague and Rotterdam, have their own municipal archive where the records of those towns are kept.

A growing number of birth, marriage and death records from the civil registration of Zuid-Holland can be found in Genlias. The records for Rotterdam and former municipalities that now belong to Rotterdam can be found on the Rotterdam digital family tree website.

Emigration from Zuid-Holland

Because Zuid-Holland has always been one of the more prosperous parts of the Netherlands, it was not a region from where an extraordinary number of people emigrated during the big emigration waves. Many merchants and entrepreneurs did emigrate however, to newly founded colonies or tradingposts.

Online images

There are several resources for images of Zuid-Holland:

• 'Green heart' image database. The 'Green heart' is a part of Zuid-Holland. To search, type in the name of the person or town you're looking for in the 'zoek naar' textbox and click 'Zoek'.
• Zuid-Holland provincial atlas 1865-1870. This atlas contains a map of the entire province as well as maps of the municipalities.

Map of Zuid-Holland

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.

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.

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.

The province of Limburg is situated in the south-east of the Netherlands. The province borders Germany to the east, Belgium to the south, Belgium and Noord-Brabant to the east and Noord-Brabant to the north.

The capital city of Limburg is Maastricht. Other larger towns are:

• Heerlen
• Sittard
• Venlo
• Geleen

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.