Archive for the ‘Tips & Tricks’ Category
Hurray! A Farmer In The Family!
Thursday, September 9th, 2010
Photograph Wikimedia Commons
It is always great if you can find more about an ancestor than just the basic data like date and place of birth. Noble ancestors are really great because they tend to leave more records. However, only seldom do we have the luck to find such an ancestor. Fortunately, there is another group of people that can leave lots of interesting trails in the archives: farmers.
Farmers usually start out as an insignificant farmhand. However, as they grow older, many of them start their own farm, and then it gets interesting. A farm involves property. There usually is the farm building itself with one or more barns, there is land to grow crops on or pasture the cattle, there are tools, machines, and animals. All these possessions leave their trails in the archives.
First of all, a farmer usually has a detailed will, specifying how the farm, cattle, and land should be divided among the kids after his death. These wills usually include detailed lists of buildings, land (with cadastral references), cash, and cattle.
To give you an idea, this is a list I recently found for a client (translated from Dutch):
- 10 horses.
- 29 cows, young and old.
- 2 pigs with piglets.
- 30 chickens.
- 2453 guilders in cash (today about € 122,600 or US$ 158,000).
- Meadows in Klein Zuid inherited from his first wife.
- Meadows inherited from his parents.
- Meadows bought from Kornelis Schipper, Adam Walter, and Dirk Groen.
- A farm with land at the Oude Uitslag van Putten, bought in 1829 from the heirs of Klaas Maartens Braat.
Second, farmers tend to buy and sell land to get better pastures and fields, or to expand the farm. Such transactions are all registered at a notary and usually contain detailed descriptions and cadastral information.
And third, you can look up the farm and the land that belonged to it in the cadastral archives. Sometimes the farm still exists or old photographs of it can be found.
So should you ever hit upon a farmer, congratulations! Do you already know of a farmer among your ancestors and want to know more? I would be happy to dive in the archives to see what we can turn op for you. Just send me a quote request with the details.
Historical Images That Make Your Family History Come To Life
Friday, June 18th, 2010
Photograph Wikimedia Commons
The National Dutch Archive hosts probably the largest collection historical documents of the Netherlands. It preserves the archives of the Dutch Government and those of social institutions or people that have been of any significance to Dutch history.
Among a lot of other things they have an image bank that contain almost half a million pictures of historical places, people and documents. This is great material to illustrate a certain period or place related to your ancestors. And if one of your ancestors did anything significant to Dutch history you might even find pictures concerning them as well.
Image Bank Collections
So what exactly does that huge image bank contain? The primary collections are the following:
- 346.000 press photographs for the period 1945-1989
- 5.048 pictures of the Labor Inspection Department for the period 1900-1955, containing images of work environments, especially industry.
- 7.246 pictures of the Dutch military campaigns in Indonesia between 1946-1950.
- 47.000 press photos of the social/political magazine Elsevier for the period 1900-1980.
- 1300 pictures of the Royal Dutch Soccer Association 1894-1946.
- 27.000 government images on agriculture, fishery, industry and such for the period 1910-1970
- Original maps of the Dutch East India Company (VOC)
- Land Registry Department maps for South Holland.
- Administration of the KNVB, the Royal Dutch Soccer Association
- Staff records for Dutch East Indies government personnel for the period 1912-1952.
Using The Image Bank
Although the web site offers a button that says “English”, be aware that this only affects the interface. All results are still presented in Dutch. Searching the image bank is pretty straightforward:
- Go to beeldbank.nationaalarchief.nl
- Press English in the upper menu.
- Type a keyword in the search field on the right and hit search.
- The results will appear in the main window.
- Click on a picture to see its details.
- If a shopping cart appears alongside the picture’s details you can order a copy of it online.
Try searching for your ancestors surname, place of birth/marriage/death, occupation or historical event during his or her lifetime. Who knows what you may find!
VOC Archives
Friday, June 4th, 2010
Photograph Wikimedia Commons
If you have stumbled upon Dutch ancestors that emigrated from the Netherlands in the early 1600s an 1700s, then it is very likely that you can find them in the archives of the Dutch East India Company, also known as VOC. The reason for this is that many Dutch colonial territories started out as trade posts of the VOC and therefore early settlers were often VOC employees or passengers on a VOC ship.
There are a couple of great online resources for doing VOC research and I would like to share them with you here.
www.vocsite.nl
A lovely site with a database of over 2000 VOC ships!
www.vocsite.nl (Dutch version)
www.vocsite.nl (English version)
www.tanap.net
This is a joint effort of the National Archives of the Netherlands, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, the Western Cape Archives and Records Service (South Africa), the Tamil Nadu Archives (India), the British Library, Oriental and India Office Collections (UK). Their mission is to preserve and share their collections on the VOC. On their site, you can search their vast collection.
www.tanap.net (English)
vocopvarenden.nationaalarchief.nl
The Dutch National Archive has a specific online database for VOC employees. The database includes employee records on a staggering number of 655,000 people over the period 1700-1794.
vocopvarenden.nationaalarchief.nl (English)
