Zuid-Holland is a province in the west of the Netherlands. It borders on Utrecht and Gelderland in the east, Noord-Brabant and Zeeland in the south, the North Sea in the west and Noord-Holland in the north.
The capital city of Zuid-Holland is The Hague (In Dutch Den Haag or ‘s-Gravenhage). Other large towns are:
- Rotterdam
- Leiden
- Dordrecht
- Gouda
- Delft
Genealogy in Zuid-Holland
Most people in Zuid-Holland were using fixed surnames long before the civil registration made this mandatory. Some regions used patronymics in addition to the surname.
Many records of Zuid-Holland are kept by the National Archives, which also functions as the provincial archive of Zuid-Holland. The larger municipalities, like The Hague and Rotterdam, have their own municipal archive where the records of those towns are kept.
A growing number of birth, marriage and death records from the civil registration of Zuid-Holland can be found in WieWasWie. The records for Rotterdam and former municipalities that now belong to Rotterdam can be found on the Rotterdam digital family tree website.
Emigration from Zuid-Holland
Because Zuid-Holland has always been one of the more prosperous parts of the Netherlands, it was not a region from where an extraordinary number of people emigrated during the big emigration waves. Many merchants and entrepreneurs did emigrate however, to newly founded colonies or tradingposts.
Online images
There are several resources for images of Zuid-Holland:
- Zuid-Holland provincial atlas 1865-1870. This atlas contains a map of the entire province as well as maps of the municipalities.
About Yvette Hoitink
The link to the Rotterdam family tree site is not working.
Thank you for alerting me to the problem. I have updated the link.
Would it be able to trace the parents of a person born in Zuid Holland between 1780 and 1802 ? Perhaps the ancestors even higher up the family tree?
Definitely! Church records in Zuid-Holland usually go back to the early 1600s and court, town, and notarial records to the early 1500s or before. I just finished a Zuid-Holland client project where I used fief records to trace the family to the early 1400s.
My father was english and lived in the hague until 2012. I never knew as i was in afghanistan. Im teying to find out exactly ehere he was buried or laid to rest.
His name was John Bessell and lived at elsstraat 3, den haag.
his birthdate was 24.05.1932 i think and if alive would be 85
Unfortunately, there is no central register of burial places or something. I recommend you contact the cemeteries in The Hague to ask if they can help you. https://www.denhaag.nl/nl/overlijden/begraafplaatsen.htm