442 years of records, spanning the period of 1367 to 1809. One of the most complete series of court records anywhere in the country. More than half of them in Latin. The Bosch' Protocols, the voluntary court records of the jurisdiction of 's-Hertogenbosch in Brabant, are a treasure trove of information. It has wills. It has deeds. It has prenups. It has stories about families from the entire region, since the jurisdiction of the city encompassed a large part of the former province of … [Read more...]
Column: Citizen archivist
4 October 2013 by Leave a Comment
Citizen archivists is a term coined by David S. Ferriero, the Archivist of the United States, to call a new breed of users of archives. Visitors who not only come to take information, but bring it as well. Visitors who help to create access to archives by contributing in the form of comments, transcripts or tags. The benefits to the archives are clear, but why would visitors even bother? Let's take me as an example. Whenever I find a Dutch immigrant on Ancestry with a hopelessly mangled name, I … [Read more...]
Column: virtual repository
2 August 2013 by Leave a Comment
"If you go back far enough, everybody is related," is a common quote when you tell people you're into genealogy . That is certainly the case with my father's side of the family tree. I started researching my ancestors over twenty years ago. Pretty soon, I discovered that my paternal grandparents, both from Winterswijk, shared multiple ancestors. Bit by bit, my tree grew from an ahnentafel to a population reconstruction of the entire region. … [Read more...]
