Dutch Genealogy News for August 2025

Here is an overview of the new online sources, projects, and other news of the past month.

Sources

• The notarial records of Haarlem and surrounding municipalities 1570-1810 are now full-text searchable. The records have been transcribed using handwritten text recognition, a type of artificial intelligence trained to read Dutch manuscripts.
• The Westfries Archief is now offering their building plans in their region in an interactive viewer. You have to zoom in to see the markers for houses that have plans available.
• Burial fees records for Hoorn 1753-1758 are now indexed and avaliable at the Westfries Archief.
• More than 4,000 cadastral maps of Eindhoven and the surrounding area have been digitized and are now available via the image bank of the RHC Eindhoven. Search for number 20333 for the cadastral maps. You can add the place name to filter.
• Baptismal records of Gouda 1736-1755 are now indexed and available via Genealogie Rijnland.
• A transcription of the civil court records of Hillegom, 1746-1811 is now available via the Hillegom historical society.
• The historical society of Haaksbergen made indexes of church records of Haaksbergen and surrounding places available online. They also provided indexes of the court records of Haaksbergen.
• Dutch Reformed church membership records of Sneek 1578-1830 have been added to Alle Friezen.
• The New Netherland Institute made the translation of the administrative correspondence of the New Netherland Council 1659-1660 available on their website.
• Information about over 8,000 people who sailed for the West India Company between 1635 and 1664 can now be searched online. The database was compiled based on notarial records of Hendrik Schaeff, an Amsterdam notary who had his office near the West India Comopany headquarters and also worked as bookkeeper for the WIC. You can search for the names of sailors (at the bottom of the page) or see a map of places of origin.

Turbulent sea, by Ludolf Bakhuysen, 1697. Image credits: Rijksmuseum

Website

• HTR Hub is a new website platform to search handwritten historical documents from various collections, which have been transcribed using handwritten text recognition. The searchable collections include records of the admiralty, the Dutch East India Company, West India Company, notarial records from Amsterdam and Suriname, and several other records that deal with the colonial past of the Netherlands. The website is an initiative of researcher Gerhard de Kok, based on open data provided by several repositories and research projects.

Archives

• The Regionaal Archief Zuid-Oost Utrecht, the regional archives of South-East Utrecht, made an agreement with representatives of copyright holders that allows them to make more newspapers available on their website. The result allows them to display the newspaperes on their website only, so they are no longer available on the portal website archieven.nl.
• The Gemeentearchief Venlo is restoring the library of the magistrate of Venlo, the historical book collection of the municipality. The oldest books date from the 1400s. [Source: GA Venlo]

Venlo town hall.
Credits: Paul van Galen, collection Rijksdienst voor het Cultureel Erfgoed, document 295706 (CC-BY-SA)