Dutch Genealogy News for February 2021

This is an overview of all the new sources, projects, and websites that were announced last month.

Sources

  • The genealogy database of the Brabants Historisch Informatie Centrum now has more than 20 million records of persons from Noord-Brabant. This includes a wide range of records: church records, civil registration records, population registers, death duties files, prison records and militia records. New sources are added every month.
  • The Noord-Hollands Archief published scans of notarial archives from Haarlem (1843-1925), Nieuwer Amstel (until 1935), and Uithoorn and Thamen (1671-1842). See the announcement for links to the scans. These records have not been indexed yet but the Noord-Hollands Archief is doing a pilot with automatic transcription and indexing to make these records searchable in the future.
  • Open Archives has created a new search engine that searches the records from the Noord-Hollands Archief and Nationaal Archief that have been transcribed using handwritten text recognition technology, including the notarial records mentioned above, and the records of the Dutch East India and West India Companies.
  • Het Utrechts Archief has been uploading their map collection to Wikimedia Commons, making them more easily available for reuse.
  • FamilySearch has been steadily digitizing court, notarial, and tax records from the Netherlands. Most of these have not been indexed and won’t turn up in people searches, but you can browse the scanned microfilms. Search the Catalog for the place name to see what is available.
  • GenealogieDomein has added transcriptions and abstracts of tax and court records from the eastern part of Gelderland.
  • The aldermen’s court records of Raamsdonk (1557-1811) and Oosterhout (1422-1811) have been digitized. The scans are available via the finding aids at the Regionaal Archief Tilburg website: Raamsdonk and Oosterhout.
  • The tax museum digitized the Year Books of the Tax Service. The PDFs can be downloaded from the tax museum website. The year books give updates about tax regulations and shows the division into tax offices. It does not give information about indivual tax payers or tax collectors.

Immnity of St. Jan in Utrecht, 1604 (public domain)

Projects

  • The indexing of 500,000 family cards from The Hague, the population that records who lived where between 1913 and 1939, has been completed. The indexes were entered by volunteers. The information is checked and will be added to the website of the Haags Gemeentearchief. An earlier index is already online but the new index has more information and corrections.
  • The University of Groningen will be digitizing 100,000 objects from its academic heritage. The results will become available via their Digital Collections.[Source: RUG]
  • The Historisch Centrum Overijssel has started a project to make the General Index of Zwolle sources available online. This huge card catalog used to be available in the reading room of the Zwolle City Archives  and contains over 2 million cards that index personal and topographical names in the Zwolle records.
  • Tresoar, which includes the provincial archive in Friesland, has received funding to digitize their Frisian audio collection. [Source: Tresoar]
  • The report for the Cultural Heritage program “Shared Past New Perspectives 2017-2020” is now available for download. It discusses projects that the Cultural Heritage Service of the Netherlands did with partners in 10 other countries with whom the Netherlands shares a history.

Content overview of Shared Past New Perspectives

Archives

  • The national lockdown has been extended. Archives will be closed until 15 March 2021 at least. Whether the archives can reopen on that date will be announced around 8 March 2021. During the lockdown, reading rooms are closed, and some archives have limited or paused scanning on demand services.
  • A church building in Heerlen has been appointed as a location of the Regionaal Historisch Centrum Limburg. The building has not been in use as a church since 2004 and has now found a new destination. It will house a visitor center and store records. [Source: RHCL]
About Yvette Hoitink

Yvette Hoitink, MLitt, CG®, QG™ is a professional genealogist, writer, and lecturer in the Netherlands. She has a Master of Letters in Family and Local History from the University of Dundee, and holds the Certification of Genealogist and Qualified Genealogist credentials. Yvette served on the Board of Directors of the Association of Professional Genealogists and won excellence awards for her articles in the National Genealogical Society Quarterly and the Association of Professional Genealogists Quarterly. Yvette has been doing genealogy for over 30 years. She helps people from across the world find their ancestors from the Netherlands and its former colonies, including New Netherland. Read about Yvette's professional genealogy services.

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