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Looking for your ancestors from the Netherlands? Yvette Hoitink is a professional genealogist in the Netherlands who does research throughout the country. Read about our services, fees, and example projects or read testimonials by clients like you.

If you want to learn more about researching Dutch ancestors, make sure to read the blog.

Featured article

Map of the week – Border between Rijnland, Utrecht, Amstelland, 1567

This week we are looking at a map showing the border between Rijnland, Utrecht, and Amstelland in 1567. It was a copy from The map is oriented with the north toward the left. Most of the map shows the border between Rijnland (in green) and the Sticht Utrecht (in yellow). These areas all had their […]

Featured article

Map of the Week – Railroad Arnhem-Zwolle, 1857

This week we are looking at a map planning the railroad from Arnhem to Zwolle in 1857. The map shows the planned trajectory and stations. This map can be found in record group 4.WCA at the National Archives, which holds the records for the Department of Public Works and its predecessors 1814-1940. The record group […]

sea with ships

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 […]

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Was Eleanor of Aquitaine my Ancestor? Generation 28 – Marie of France

This is the twenty-ninth post in a series about my possible line of descent from Eleanor of Aquitaine. In the first post, I explained how I discovered the possible line, and how I am going to verify it one generation at a time. In the last post, I proved that my twenty-fourth great-grandmother Marie of Champagne, […]

Ask Yvette – Difference between Huguenot and Walloon

Several people have asked me what the difference is between a Huguenot and Walloon. Huguenots Huguenots were protestants from France in the 1500s and 1600s. Protestants were persecuted in France from the start of the Reformation in the early 1500s to 1598, when the Edict of Nantes promised them religious freedom, and again after 1685, […]

Tip of the week

view of a city from a ship

Quick Tip – Video about New Amsterdam

The YouTube channel Defragged History just published the first episode of a series about Uncovering the Fascinating History of New Amsterdam: New York’s Origin Story. The video, which is 70 minutes long, gives the historical context, including about the West India Company, Eighty Years’ War, the Dutch Reformed Church, the Pilgrims, and many other topics […]

Term of the week

Dutch term – Openbaarheidsbeperking

Openbaarheidsbeperking means a limitation on the public availability; an access restriction. You may come across the term in finding aids or archival descriptions. Under the Archiefwet [Archive Law] of 1995, records created by the government are public, and access can only be restricted on three grounds: Privacy of living people, The interests of the real […]