To understand your ancestors, you need to study them in their context. One way to do that is to compare your ancestors to their neighbors to get some idea of their place in the community. Here are some research questions that may help you get to know your ancestors: Did your ancestors own their home? Did most people in the community rent or own? How much did your ancestors pay in taxes? How much did other people in the neighborhood pay? How old were your ancestors when they … [Read more...]
Quick tip – Open Journals
4 August 2021 by Leave a Comment
If you are interested in reading about Dutch history, check out the website Open Journals. It provides open access to several journals, including: BMGN - Low Countries Historical Review Early Modern Low Countries Historical Life Course Studies The Rijksmuseum Bulletin TSEG - The Low Countries Journal of Social and Economic History Articles in these journals are in various languages, many in English. … [Read more...]
Quick tip – Check the finding aid or catalog for scans
28 July 2021 by 2 Comments
When you are searching for your ancestors, it's tempting to stick to searching for their name in an online index. But only a small fraction of records have been indexed. A larger part is available online as images that have not been indexed yet. These images are often available via the catalog or finding aids on the website of archives. Look for terms like inventarissen or archieven. In some cases, the records have not been scanned yet, but the catalog or finding aid has a button to order … [Read more...]
Quick tip – Beware of chapter 1
14 July 2021 by 1 Comment
If you're lucky, your literature research may reveal a book published about your family done by genealogists in the past. Writing such books was popular in the nineteenth century, especially for prominent families, or descendants of early settlers of a colony, for example. Several such books exist for New Netherland settlers. In many of these early books, chapter 1 is where the author tries to sketch the early history of the family. This is where you find claims of royal descent, of … [Read more...]
Quick tip – Use & in Open Archives
23 June 2021 by Leave a Comment
If you are using Open Archives for your research, try searching for two persons at once by using the & operator. Example: Hendrik Hoitink and Johanna Piek Let's say I am looking for my ancestors Hendrik Hoitink and Johanna Piek. Searching for Hendrik Hoitink gives me 404 results. Searching for Johanna Piek gives me 1,456 results. That's a lot of results to wade through! Most of them will be irrelevant. However, if I search for Hendrik Hoitink & Johanna Piek, I get just 49 … [Read more...]
Quick tip – If you wanted it or needed it…
9 June 2021 by Leave a Comment
Easy rule of thumb for working with Dutch records: If you wanted it or needed it, there probably was a tax on it. Marriage tax. Window tax. Hearth tax. Beer tax. Tobacco tax. Servant tax. Petrol tax. Dog tax. Real estate tax. Genealogists must be the only people in the world who like taxes, because of the wonderful records they created! … [Read more...]
Virtual Dutch-American Conference
2 June 2021 by Leave a Comment
AADAS, the Association for the Advancement of Dutch-American Studies, is holding a virtual conference: Telling, Sharing, and Preserving Dutch-American Stories on 18 and 19 June 2021. Registration is free for AADAS members. The keynote speaker will be Dr. George Harinck, Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam, who specializes in the cultural history of Dutch Protestantism in the 19th and 20th centuries and has published widely on this topic. Other speakers include Suzanne Sinke, Mary Risseeuw, Penny … [Read more...]
Quick tip – Investigate gaps between children
26 May 2021 by 1 Comment
If you are researching a family before in the period before modern birth control methods, a gap in children is worth investigating further. Possible reasons for the gap include: You may not have found all the children yet. For example, the family may have lived elsewhere, and you have not consulted the birth or baptismal records there. There may have been stillbirths or miscarriages. Since the introduction of the civil registration (1811 in most parts of the Netherlands), stillborn … [Read more...]
Quick tip – Are you Searching for the Right Name?
14 April 2021 by 3 Comments
There can be different reasons why you can't find the person you're looking for. Perhaps they were from a different town, or the record you need doesn't survive. But they could be hiding under a different name. Before the introduction of the civil registration (1811 in most parts of the Netherlands), there was no requirement for a hereditary surname. People could be using different surnames in different records: They could use a patronymic, named after their father's first name. The … [Read more...]
Quick tip – What Other Sources Are There?
7 April 2021 by 1 Comment
When you get stuck, ask yourself what other records were created in the time and place your ancestors lived, for example: Did the town or village create records? Often, you can find townsfolk in town minutes, tax records, records about the town's defense, etc. Was there a landlord or manor that created records? Were there tax records, either at the town or provincial level? Were there charities or orphanages that left records? For my article “Griete Smith’s Parentage: Proof in … [Read more...]
