Parenteel is the Dutch word for an overview of descendants in the male and female lines. A parenteel can be represented in a narrative form or in a chart. It can include people with many different last names, as the descendants of daughters and their spouses are traced too. Some Dutch genealogists publish parentelen online, so a search for the term parenteel combined with a surname or place name of interest may lead you to these publications. Example: Parenteel of Egbert Mierdinck The largest … [Read more...]

An ambtenaar is a civil servant or government employee. In civil registration records, you will often see an ambtenaar van de burgerlijke stand (clerk of the civil registration) officiating the marriage or registering the birth or death. During your research you can encounter ambtenaren in two ways: your ancestors may have been ambtenaren themselves but they also would have dealt with ambtenaren like clerks, teachers, soldiers, police officers or town criers in their every-day lives. The … [Read more...]

Many archives or other repositories will have an online archievenoverzicht, a listing of their collection. The word archievenoverzicht literally means "overview of archives." It will give you a list of the collections, usually organized by categories like population records, court records or tax records. Some archives will only have the archievenoverzicht online, but most will have the finding aids (inventaris) for the underlying collections as well. That will tell you which records are … [Read more...]

Bibliotheek is the Dutch word for library. Unlike in the US, most libraries don't have a large genealogical collection. Most will just have one or two general genealogical reference books in their collection plus some local history books. Only major libraries will have a subscription to genealogical journals such as Gens Nostra or De Nederlandsche Leeuw [the Dutch Lion]. To find genealogical collections, visit an archive (archief) instead. … [Read more...]