Trace your Dutch roots

Your quarterly Dutch genealogy guide

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Quarterly newsletter on Dutch genealogy. Issue 15. Publication date January 2010.

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Welcome to the slightly delayed January issue of this newsletter, the first issue of 2010.

In this issue:

  • Online scans of Dutch records
  • A translation exercise
  • Infixes in Dutch names

The next issue is planned for April. As always, topic suggestions may be sent to suggest@van-kampen.org

Online scans of Dutch records

There are many (usually free) sites with Dutch genealogical records. The most important one is Genlias, but there are also many local, regional and provincial sites. Most of these sites are indexes to Dutch acts, for example birth, marriage and death (BMD) acts. But sometimes you want to see the real act. After all, an index may contain errors, and an index almost always contains less information than the act itself. In most cases you have to visit a Dutch archive to see the real act (or visit your local Family History Center, they may have access to microfilms of Dutch BMD acts), but several Dutch archives are in the process of making scans of their collection available online.

Below, I highlight a few sites containing scans. All but two of these sites are free. The list is far from complete, but should give you an idea of what is available. Visit Digital Resources Netherlands and Belgium for a complete list of all online resources (including sites with scans).

  • The sites Alle Groningers and Alle Friezen are busy scanning BMD acts from the provinces Groningen and Friesland, respectively.
  • The local archive of Hengelo was one of the first to put scans of its BMD and population registers online.
  • The Central Bureau for Genealogy charges a small fee for access to their collection. Their most important online records are their collection of newspaper cuttings of BMD announcements.
  • The city archive of Amsterdam also charges for access to their scans. Many records are already online, and you can request scanning of records that are not available yet. They don't have BMD acts, though.
  • The city archive of Den Haag maintains two websites with scans: An unindexed collection of BMD records, and a properly indexed collection of population register records (1913-1939).
  • An interesting project is Van papier naar digitaal (From Paper To Pixels). Volunteers photograph or scan records and upload them to the website. There are few or no indexes: You have to browse the images one by one. Images are sorted by province and town.
  • For advanced researchers: Utrecht scanned its notarial archive. The archive is indexed and there are summaries of each act (in Dutch).

A translation exercise

It's good to know that there are so many scans of Dutch acts online (most of them free!), but they are (usually) in Dutch. So how can you understand those acts?

Dutch is a difficult language, but reading Dutch birth, marriage and death acts is a skill you can learn. These acts have a relative constant form, and with practice, patience, perseverance, and a good dictionary, you can understand most acts, even though you won't be able to understand every word.

To help you understand these acts, the Trace your Dutch roots website contains a Dutch genealogy dictionary with words and phrases that you are likely to encounter in BMD acts, the population register, or church books. Also on this website: The article Reading and understanding Dutch birth acts.

We have done translation exercises in this newsletter in the past, but that is already a long time ago. It is time for a new exercise: We will translate a death act from the civil register. For this exercise I selected a death act from the town Leek, province Groningen. We will have a look at the first death act of 1896. A scan of this act is available on the website Alle Groningers.

In het jaar duizend achthonderd zes en negentig, den vierden der maand Januari, zijn voor ons Ambtenaar van den Burgerlijken Stand der gemeente Leek, arrondissement en provincie Groningen, verschenen Duurt van Dijk oud acht en veertig jaren, van beroep landbouwer wonende te Zevenhuizen, en Klaas Pater oud een en dertig jaren, van beroep arbeider wonende te Zevenhuizen, welke ons hebben verklaard, dat op den vierden der maand Januari deezes jaars des morgens te vier uur, binnen deze gemeente te Zevenhuizen is overleden Johannes Deelstra oud zes jaren van beroep zonder geboren te Zevenhuizen laatst gewoond hebbende te Zevenhuizen, zoontje van Hinderikus Deelstra overleden en van Jantje Kalfsbeek van beroep arbeidster wonende te Zevenhuizen. Van welke aangifte en verklaring deze akte is opgemaakt, die, na voorlezing, door de aangevers en ons is geteekend.

Note that a large part of the act is printed. Once you understand the printed part you can largely understand all 1896 death acts from Leek. Death acts from other years or other places will be similar, with slight differences. Only acts from the first few decades of the 19th century are often harder to understand.

Before reading any further, try if you can get the gist of this act, using the Dutch genealogy dictionary or maybe an online translation service like the Dictionary.com Translator.

The act opens with the date: In het jaar duizend achthonderd zes en negentig, den vierden der maand Januari, In the year 1896, the fourth of the month January. Next, the registrar and the appearers are introduced: zijn voor ons Ambtenaar van den Burgerlijken Stand der gemeente Leek, arrondissement en provincie Groningen, verschenen Duurt van Dijk oud acht en veertig jaren, van beroep landbouwer wonende te Zevenhuizen, en Klaas Pater oud een en dertig jaren, van beroep arbeider wonende te Zevenhuizen, appeared for us, registrar of the municipality Leek, district and province Groningen, Duurt van Dijk, age 48 years, occupation farmer (landbouwer), resident of Zevenhuizen, and Klaas Pater, age 31, occupation labourer (arbeider), resident of Zevenhuizen.

The interesting part of this act is, of course, the declaration of Duurt and Klaas: welke ons hebben verklaard, dat op den vierden der maand Januari deezes jaars des morgens te vier uur, binnen deze gemeente te Zevenhuizen is overleden Johannes Deelstra oud zes jaren van beroep zonder geboren te Zevenhuizen laatst gewoond hebbende te Zevenhuizen, zoontje van Hinderikus Deelstra overleden en van Jantje Kalfsbeek van beroep arbeidster wonende te Zevenhuizen, who declared to us that on the 4th of January of this year [1896] at 4am within this municipality in Zevenhuizen passed away Johannes Deelstra age 6 occupation none born in Zevenhuizen most recently living in Zevenhuizen, son (zoontje is a diminutive of zoon) of Hinderikus Deelstra deceased and of Jantje Kalfsbeek occupation labourer living in Zevenhuizen. Zevenhuizen, by the way, is a village in the municipality Leek.

The closing sentence states an act was made up and signed by all: Van welke aangifte en verklaring deze akte is opgemaakt, die, na voorlezing, door de aangevers en ons is geteekend, of which notification and declaration this act was made up, which, after reading it out, was signed by the appearers and us.

Further reading:

Infixes in Dutch names

Infixes (tussenvoegsels in Dutch) in Dutch names (like van, de, van der, or in 't), often confuse English-speaking people. A few basic rules:

  • Infixes are generally not capitalized (except at the beginning of a sentence).
  • Infixes are separate words, separated from the surname by a single space: de Jong is correct, deJong, Dejong and DeJong are not.
  • Infixes are ignored when sorting: de Vries and van der Meulen are sorted under V and M respectively.

The real difficulty is searching a database for a name with an infix: In which field does the infix go? Unfortunately, different sites chose different solutions:

  • Some sites, like Genlias, have a separate field for the infix. This field will be labelled tussenvoegsel or sometimes voorvoegsel in Dutch, and infix or prefix in English.
  • Other sites, like Zeeuwen Gezocht, treat infix as part of the surname. Usually you can also leave off the infix: Enter either van der Horst or Horst in the surname field to find someone named Jan van der Horst.
  • The Central Bureau for Genealogy wants the infix after the surname, separated by a comma and a space: Enter Veld, in 't, to search for someone named Jacobus in 't Veld.

©2010 Henk van Kampen. All rights reserved.

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