Dutch Genealogy News for September 2019

Here is an overview of the new sources, projects, and news about archives that were announced last month.

Online sources

• The Memories van Successie (death duties files) of Noord-Brabant are being scanned and added to the Brabants Historisch Informatie Centrum website. The first batch of scans has been uploaded. Death duties files give you an overview of the property owned by people at the time of their death, tells you if they had a will, and who the heirs were. The records were already indexed so you can search for your ancestors’ name to see if there was a death duties file created after their deaths.
• The aldermen’s court of Loon op Zand (1504-1810) has been scanned and is available via the finding aid at the Regional Archives of Tilburg website. Most records are unindexed but the finding aid includes the names of people involved in the series of law suit records.
• The Historisch Centrum Overijssel digitized several records: voluntary court records, the records of the common grounds, tax records from before 1811. The scans will be added to the finding aids, see the announcement for a list of the finding aids.
• Indexes of several court records from the Achterhoek region in Gelderland have been added to GenealogieDomein. This includes inquests into people who died of unnatural causes in the manor of Bredevoort and civil court records from Borculo. Various transcribed tax and church records have also been added to the site.
• Scans and indexes of birth records from the province of Utrecht (1913-1918) have been added to the Utrechts Archief website.
• An open data pilot to combine data from the dispossessed properties in World War II and the cadastral administration resulted in an interactive map of all these properties.
• FamilySearch added about 60,000 records to the index of Noord-Holland Civil Registration records, 1811-1950.

Loon op Zand castle

Websites

• The Historisch Centrum Overijssel, which houses the archives of the province of Overijssel and the city of Zwolle, has a new website. The “Personen” section has three databases with indexed records.
• The website Mijn Stad Mijn Dorp (My City My Village) was renewed with an improved search interface. The website provides access to stories about the history of cities and villages in Overijssel.
• A new version of the website Collectie Gelderland launched. This portal provides access to the collections of several heritage institutions in Gelderland, and is a great place to look for images to illustrate your Gelderland family history.
• The website Brabantse Gesneuvelden commemorates casualties in Noord-Brabant since World War II. This includes soldiers and people working for the resistance. The website currently lists 2,217 casualties and is seeking biographical information and photos about all these people.

Brabantse Gesneuvelden

Projects

• The National Archives of the Netherlands did a pilot project to research how large record collections could be made searchable, using the central archives of special jurisdiction. These World War II tribunal archives will become public in 2025, and many researchers are itching to work with these. The project demonstrated that optical character recognition, machine learning and extracting names is difficult but can be successful when matched with existing data sets. [Source: Oorlogsbronnen]
• The National Archives has put out a call for proposals for innovative ways to search in large amounts of handwritten records that have been transcribed using handwritten text recognition technology. Suppliers can enter a competition to be awarded funding for a prototype. [source: National Archives]
• NIOD, the Netherlands Institute for War Documentation and Genocide Studies, is looking for volunteers to transcribe diaries from World War II. [Source: NIOD]
• The Regional Historisch Centrum Limburg is looking for private records from World War II. People willing to donate World War II records can contact the RHCL. [Source: RHCL]
• The Royal Library and Tresoar have signed an agreement to jointly undertake the digitization of written and printed cultural heritage in the Frisian language. About 10,000 Frisian books will be digitized and published via Delpher. [Source: KB]
• Noord-Holland is going to add the owners of properties in Noord-Holland in 1832 to HisGis, the Historical Geographical Information System. They are looking for volunteers to help enter the cadastral information. [Source: Noord-Hollands Archief]

Archives

• The records of the municipality of Vlissingen will go to the Zeeuws Archief. Up to now, Vlissingen had its own municipal archives. The municipal council decided to move the records to the Zeeuws Archief to improve preservation and access.  [Source: Zeeuws Archief]

View of Vlissingen, 1665. Credits: Zeeuws Archief, Zeeuws Genootschap, Zelandia Illustrata II nr 1150 (public domain)

Conferences

• Famillement, the biennial Dutch genealogy conference, announced their plans for 2020. The conference will be held in the Amsterdam City Archives on 27 June 2020. The conference typically has several lectures (in Dutch) and a range of booths with local societies and vendors. It provides a great opportunity for networking. [Source: CBG]