Find your Dutch roots on the Internet

I recently watched a PBS show with Henry Louis Gates, Jr. tracing back the family lines of numerous prominent African Americans. Now, I’ve always been interested in finding out my own family roots and I remembered I had some copies of what other people have jotted down about my mother’s side of the family. That’s where it started.

I wrote down as much as I could and asked my mother to fill in the gaps as much as possible. She then suggested I should look on genlias.nl, which is a collective of Dutch provincial archives. From there, I also found the Brabants Historisch Informatie Centrum and the Historisch Informatie Centrum Helmond. The latter goes back the furthest and coincidently it is also the archive of the region where my paternal family line originated.

With all this information, I can now trace back seven generations in my paternal line, which translates to my great-great-great-great-great-grandfather, who was born in either 1720 or 1721. All of this is very exciting and I had no idea it could be this easy.

I will be sure to visit these archives in person next time I travel to the Netherlands, in the hopes of finding more details and perhaps tracing back my lineage even further.

If you think you might have Dutch forefathers, Genlias is a great place to look. The only catch is that you will have to know at least a couple of details to start your search; there are many names in the directory, so you won’t want to be guessing.

P.S. I know this is not part of the themes and categories I recently outlined; it’s interesting nonetheless.

30 August 2006 | Across the board, All things Dutch | Comments