If your family lived in the Netherlands after say 1850, check your family papers to see if there is a marriage booklet ("trouwboekje"). These booklets are given to the spouses during the marriage ceremony and record the information about the spouses. It is then updated when children are born or when the spouses die. See the article about my mother's descent from her father Jan Marijnissen for an example of using a marriage booklet. … [Read more...]
Quick tip: Are your records independent?
19 February 2014 by Leave a Comment
The next time you find a birth, marriage and death record that all agree about the name of the person and his date of birth or age, ask yourself: are these documents independent? An extract of the birth record would have been submitted in order to get married. The details from the marriage record may have been copied into the marriage booklet, which in turn may have been used by the informant of the death record. Understanding how these documents are created will help you analyze their value as … [Read more...]
Marriage booklets: why they are important even if you can’t find them
27 September 2013 by 9 Comments
In the third quarter of the nineteenth century, municipal authorities began to hand out "trouwboekjes" [marriage booklets] to the bride and groom at the time of their marriage. This booklet would contain the names of the spouses, date and place of their marriage, and had room for the names, birth places and birth dates of any children born to this couple. These booklets can be hard to find, as they are personal documents rather than government documents. The place to find them is in your family, … [Read more...]
