The Netherlands is located in the delta of several of Europe’s major rivers, including the Rhine, the Scheldt, and the Meuse. Over time, more than a hundred villages and cities in the Netherlands were lost to water.
In a few cases, catastrophic floods washed away a whole town, like during the St. Elisabeth Flood of 1421. In other cases, repeated smaller floods caused people to abandon a place. This happened in West-Vlieland and Reimerswaal, for example. It could also be that the townsfolk moved to a new, dryer, location and gave the new town the same name as the old, as in the case of Schoondijke. Some villages were flooded as part of planned rerouting of rivers or creation of floodplanes, including Gansoijen in Noord-Brabant. Most drowned places in the Netherlands were located in the province of Zeeland.
If you happen to come across a drowned place in your research, do not immediately dispair. In many cases, the town was abandoned gradually or planned, and records were transported before the place drowned. Checking old maps can help you figure out the location of towns that no longer exist.
To find out if a place where your ancestors lived flooded, check the list of drowned places in the Netherlands plus a separate list of 117 drowned villages in Zeeland.
Drowned villages in the land of Reimerswaal, on map of circa 1575. Credits: Jacobus van Deventer, via Wikimedia Commons (public domain)
About Yvette Hoitink
Yvette, thank you for this interesting article and the sources for more information.