This is an overview of new sources, projects, and other news that was announced last month. Sources Village records from Berkel, Enschot and Heukelom (1579-1813), Hilvarenbeek (1392-1810) and Oisterwijk (1390-1814) have been digitized. Scans can be found in the finding aids at the Regionaal Archief Tilburg website (links in blogpost). Cadastral records from Limburg since 1842 are available via Aezel. Scans of manumission records from Curacao are now available via the finding aid of … [Read more...]
About this website
Creating a website like this is a fun activity. There are so many options, so many choices. What do visitors want? What do I want? In this blog I will describe some of the things I encounter in developing and maintaining this website.
Best Websites for Old Maps of the Netherlands
2 July 2021 by 2 Comments
I love old maps. They give a snapshot of what the area looked like where my ancestor lived and are great illustrations for publications about my ancestors. Here are some of my favorite places to find old maps. City Atlas of Braun and Hogenberg, 1572 The City Atlas of Braun and Hogenberg covers cities in all of Europe. The 1572 atlas is available via the Utrecht University Library website. Blaeu atlas 1649 The Blaeu atlas from 1649 has maps of each region in the … [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...]
Instructor at SLIG Advanced Evidence Analysis Practicum!
17 June 2021 by Leave a Comment
I am excited to announce that I will be one of the instructors for the Advance Evidence Analysis Practicum at the Salt Lake Institute of Genealogy this Fall! The practicum is a six-week virtual course, where every week, a new instructor will introduce a case. Students will then work by themselves to solve it, and at the end of the week, they will discuss the outcome. The instructor will then show how they solved the case. This allows students to compare strategies to see what worked and what … [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...]
WikiTree Challenge – Yvette Hoitink
7 June 2021 by 4 Comments
This is going to be fun. I have been invited for the WikiTree Challenge. WikiTree is a collaborative tree, where everybody contributes their knowledge, like Wikipedia for genealogy. Each week in 2021, a team of WikiTreers is collaborating on the tree of a special genealogy guest star. They want to make their genealogy here more accurate and complete than it is anywhere else. This week it is my turn! I look forward to seeing what they will find. On my father's side, all my brick walls are … [Read more...]
Dutch Genealogy News for May 2021
4 June 2021 by Leave a Comment
This is an overview of new sources, projects, and other news that was announced last month. Sources Erfgoed 's-Hertogenbosch added scans of the Smulders card catalog of the court records of Den Bosch to their website. These cards index the aldermen's court records before 1811. The Brabants Historisch Informatie Centrum added photos by Martien Hermsen to their online image collection. These photos show the area around Mill in World War II. A new index was published of the Admission … [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...]
Certification renewed – Are you ready to become certified?
28 May 2021 by 1 Comment
Great news: my Certified Genealogist® credential was just renewed for another five years! I have been a board-certified genealogist for five years now, as the first and so far the only genealogist in the Netherlands. Every five years, we have to show our work still meets standards by submitting a portfolio with work samples to the Board for Certification of Genealogists. I submitted a case study and one of my Eleanor of Aquitaine blog posts. I have submitted the case study for publication in … [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...]
