When you are researching your ancestors, there is nothing wrong with speculation. Building and testing hypotheses is a great way to discover new evidence that may help you prove your case. Just don't confuse speculation with proof, and make sure to not spread speculative information without clearly labeling as such (or not at all, to prevent people from jumping to conclusions). For example, if you are trying to find the parents of your brick wall ancestor Cornelis, and you know his oldest son … [Read more...]
Column – Fake News and Alternative Facts
17 March 2017 by Leave a Comment
You see it everywhere online: fake news. Sensational stories, written to draw attention and gain clicks for ads. Fake news about the presidential candidates may even have influenced the US elections. Even in genealogy, it is often the less reliable information that draws our attention. Complete family trees can be found online, but may not be based on solid research. Indexes are easier to access than original records, but may have mistakes. And because of copyright restrictions, genealogy … [Read more...]
Quick tip – Don’t go back too far too soon
10 August 2016 by Leave a Comment
When we go back in time, we often hit a brick wall for a person for whom we only know the name. Perhaps we find a marriage record that lists the father, or we find a name with a patronymic that suggests who the father was. It is very hard to find records if you only know a name. Often, names are not unique. There may be multiple people in the town with the same name, perhaps named after the same grandparent. You will need to know more about your ancestor to be sure that the record you find … [Read more...]
Quick tip – Apply Lessons Learned to Old Problems
3 August 2016 by 1 Comment
The longer we do genealogy, the better we get. We'll learn about new sources and strategies that help us solve new problems that come across our paths. But we should not stop there: we should also periodically revisit our old problems and apply the lessons we have learned. Two years ago, I wrote an article about how to find the father of an illegitimate child. One of the strategies I discussed in the article is to analyze all the records from around the time of the birth. When I was … [Read more...]
How Taking Clients Made Me a Better Genealogist
29 July 2016 by 2 Comments
I had been doing genealogy for over twenty years when I started taking paying clients. I had done pro bono work for friends, researching all over the Netherlands, but that was more in a coaching capacity and often did not require formal reporting. In the years since I started taking clients, my skills have grown. Here are five ways in which being a professional genealogist has made me a better researcher. 1: Nothing beats prose writing When you work for a client, one of the things that you … [Read more...]
Ask Yvette – Dealing with Records Loss in World War II
22 July 2016 by 2 Comments
To celebrate 1,000 likes of Dutch Genealogy Services on Facebook, likers were invited to ask a research question for a free consultation. Some could quickly be answered on Facebook. Eric Schmidt asked a question that some of you may struggle with as well, so I thought I'd answer it in more detail. Eric asked: For years this is my brick wall located in Zeeuws-Vlaanderen in the Netherlands. I am searching for the parents of Anthonij de Smidt (more information here). As a lot of records from … [Read more...]
Record Analysis Example – Dutch Death Record
15 July 2016 by 3 Comments
Learning how to analyze a record is one of the most valuable skills we need to learn as a genealogist. To give you an example of how this works, let's take a look at the death record of my second great-grandfather Gerrit Jan van Nijkerken. Abstract: Warnsveld, 10 March 1924. Marinus August George Schoute, 37, overseer, living here, and Gerrit Pelgrum, 51, laborer, declare that on eight [corrected from six] March 1924 at 5.30 PM [corrected from 8.30 PM] died in a house in Warnsveld ward … [Read more...]
Differences between Genealogy in the Netherlands and the US
3 June 2016 by 5 Comments
On Facebook, Linda Roos asked me about the differences between genealogy in the Netherlands and the United States. That topic warrants a longer reply than I gave her on Facebook, so here we go! 1: Quality of sources In the Netherlands, we have an abundance of high-quality sources. Since 1850, we have had the population register, recording who lived where: not just every ten years but kept up-to-date. Civil registration records of births, marriages, and deaths go back to 1811 or even earlier. … [Read more...]
Quick tip – Mind the Gap
11 May 2016 by Leave a Comment
One of my clients hired me to help solve his brick wall. The marriage record indicated the ancestor was born in the same village as where he married. The client found two people by that name who were baptized there, but both married other people and could not be the person he was looking for. He was wondering if the ancestor could have come from elsewhere but had no idea where to look. When I analyzed the information, I found that several records that the client had already found mentioned … [Read more...]
Five Things I Learned From Working With Archivists
22 January 2016 by 4 Comments
During the past twenty years, I've had the pleasure of working with some wonderful archivists on a range of projects, both in my previous job as IT consultant and project manager at the National Archives and in my current occupation as professional genealogist. I'm not an archivist myself, but picked up some useful tips from them. 1: Context is everything You can't understand a record until you understand it's context. Who created it? Why? When? What were the regulations that led to the … [Read more...]
