Tag: archives

52W Mark II – Week 17: DNA

For this week’s 52 Ancestors Challenge theme, we were simply provided three letters, DNA. That could stand for anything!

Of course, the idea is probably to write about genetic genealogy. Thankfully, we are not beholden to what the weekly theme should be. Suffice to say, if we were, this would be an incredibly short post. I have precious little to say about deoxyribonucleic acid; I have far more I can say about the Dutch National Archives.

Of course, the institution is not called the Dutch National Archives. In Dutch, the institution is simply “Nationaal Archief“. You don’t need to be a polyglot to figure out that’s “National Archive”.

If you do Dutch genealogy, you’re not getting information from churches, courthouses, or libraries. The archives are where you want to be. The Netherlands adopted a system of civil registration in 1811. At that time, it had all the churches turn over their baptism, marriage, and burial records. Since then, births, marriages, and deaths have been recorded at the municipal level. After a period of time, these records are turned over to the civil or provincial archives. As well, other governmental institutions, as well as the courts, are required to turn their records over to the archives after a requisite period of time.

The Dutch archives are amazingly accessible over the internet. A lot of resources have been put into digitizing archival holdings and putting them online. Many of the provincial and municipal archives provide this material through their own websites, many of which have an English interface. However, they all contribute to a central online source, WieWasWie, which has both a Dutch and English interface. There’s also OpenArchives. It’s a portal and aggregator, that uses openly available information, although it is privately backed.

The Nationaal Archief, located in Anna van Buerenplein (Anna van Bueren Square) The Hague.

While so much is available over the internet, the old adage “not everything is online” still applies. Of course, with an entire ocean and and a whole continent separating me from the Netherlands, I don’t have the opportunity to visit in person. Thus, I’ve been to the Nationaal Archief exactly once, but as part of an unplanned visit shortly before closing just to get a lay of the land.

My last trip to the Netherlands was spurred by the fact my parents were taking a cruise out of Amsterdam. They went early to spend time with family. I’ve always wanted to visit the Netherlands with my father, so I took advantage of the opportunity.

After they left for their cruise, I had a couple days on my own. I decided that I wanted to go to The Hague, to do exactly two things. First and foremost, I had to see my favourite painting by my favourite artist: Girl With a Pear Earring by Johannes Vermeer. It’s part of the holdings of Mauritshuis, a museum adjacent to the Dutch parliament buildings in The Hague. The second was to visit a small polder in Leidschendam, on the outskirts of The Hague, which is either the source of my surname, or was named after my family.

One of two reasons I went to The Hague.

Given the limited time and my singular goal, I did not make any plans to visit the Nationaal Archief. If I was going to spend any time during my trip in an archive, that would probably not be the one. The records I really need are to be found in the Noord-Hollands Archief in Haarlem (provincial) or Alkmaar Archief (regional). However, the Nationaal Archief also houses the archives for the province of Zuid-Holland, so a visit there would not be fruitless. Furthermore, the Centraal Bureau voor Genealogie (since renamed CBG Centrum voor Familiegeschiedenis – Centre for Family History) is located within the same building as the Nationaal Archief.

However, if I had done even a minimal amount of research, I would have discovered that the Nationaal Archief is located immediately beside The Hague’s main central train station. My hotel was a five minute walk away.

On my last day in The Hague, I found myself walking by the Nationaal Archief, and noticed it was still open. I couldn’t resist popping in, if only to take a peek. The place was spacious and pleasant. There was an archivist on duty who was very welcoming. When I explained that I wasn’t there to do any actual research and that I only wanted to take a look, she gave me a bit of a tour.

Among the items the archivist showed me was an original of the Treaty of Friendship and Commerce between the States General of the United Netherlands and the United States of America. The Netherlands was the second country in the world, after France, to formally recognize the independent United States. This treaty formed the foundation of their formal diplomatic relations.

At the time this treaty was signed, the Netherlands was not a unitary state; rather, it was more of a confederation of largely autonomous states. Thus, there are eight Dutch signatories. The single American signatory was John Adams, who later became the second President of the United States.

I also saw this map of central Noord Holland, which shows many of the towns and villages where many of my ancestors lived. It is also where many of my closest Dutch relatives live. At the top, near the middle, is Waarland, where my father was born.

If I should ever return to The Hague with lots of time for myself, I definitely need to plan a return trip to the Nationaal Archief.

The Nationaal Archief is directly across from the University of Leiden’s campus in The Hague. “Een leven zonder boeken is onleefbaar” – “A life without books is unlivable”

Arnoldus (“Nol”) van den Hurk

1935 – 2023

It’s funny how you can feel so bereaved at the passing of someone you’ve never met in real life. Nevertheless, today I feel a profound sense of loss over the passing of someone I consider to be a dear friend.

Arnoldus (“Nol”) van den Hurk passed away today. He was 87. I’ve known him for almost thirty years. Nol was a police officer in Haarlem, Netherlands who, like me, was an avid genealogist. I met him online 28 years ago, probably through Usenet, when he posted an offer to do archival lookups. I messaged him with one name, my great grandfather. He responded with information for many more of my ancestors in addition to my great grandfather. Over the next two years and over 50 emails, he provided me with information about scores of my Dutch family.

Over the years, our relationship expanded beyond genealogy, particularly with the advent of Facebook. Many times over the years I forgot about our connection through genealogy. I very much enjoyed his posts about his daily life and his many travels. Nol was also a great help to me as I tried to teach myself Dutch, answering my questions about word meanings, phrases, and idioms.

I knew Nol had been in the hospital for an extended period last year, but he was home before Christmas. He had been planning on visiting the United States this summer.

I wrote about Nol in a post last summer, which you can read here: https://deckofancestors.wordpress.com/2022/08/01/52-weeks-week-31-help/

My biggest regret is that I never met Nol in person. Despite that, he made an incredible impact in my life. You will be missed, Nol.

52 Weeks – Week 31: Help

The greatest genealogical help I received began 26 years ago this summer. It started with a simple invitation I spotted on a message board. Someone was planning a visit to a Dutch archive later in the week and was offering to do a lookup for anyone who might be interested.

The National Archives of the Netherlands in The Hague.

Two things immediately came to mind when I saw this week’s 52 Ancestors Challenge theme, “Help”. First was the earworm that has resulted in the Beatles’ song bouncing around in my head all day. Second was my friend Nol, who over the years has provided me with an incredible amount of help in researching the Dutch side of my family.

Back in the early days of online research in the 1990s, there wasn’t the variety or depth of resources that we now enjoy today. One source I found said that as of 1996, there were only 10 million users of the internet world-wide. While many libraries, archives, and genealogical societies had begun to stake out a presence, they weren’t yet able to provide the scope of digital materials that are so easily accessible today. It was still often necessary to obtain documents the old-fashioned way, by using the mail. Bulletin boards and Usenet were still a common way of connecting with other genealogists.

Johannis Albertus van der Fluit (1894 – 1932), the subject of my first query to Nol.

While I know it was sometime in early September 1996, I can’t remember where I first saw the original post I saw by Nol (short for “Arnoldus”), or whether it was a message board or something else. It was just a brief statement saying that he was going into a local archive the next day and asking whether he could look anything up for anyone while he was there. I contacted him and asked him if he’d be willing to look up one name for me, my great grandfather Johannis Albertus van der Fluit.

Nol emailed me the next day, telling me that the information I needed was held in the Noord Holland Archives in Haarlem (Noord-Hollands Archief). To my good fortune, Nol lives in Haarlem. He said he would be going into the archive sometime later in the week and he would get back to me.

My first email from Nol after we moved off the message boards. Later in our correspondence, I learned that the family line of Nol’s wife intersected with mine.

Nol followed up less than a week later. Not only had he looked up my great grandfather, but he looked up all four of my father’s paternal great grandparents (my great great grandparents). Furthermore, Nol took it further and looked up several of my great great great grandparents. The email he sent me set out a summary of the birth records for each of them, including the record numbers, dates and places of birth, each person’s parents’ names, the names of the witnesses, and the occupations of the persons named in the records.

While I had some prior knowledge, my early exchanges with Nol provided a significant introduction to the nomenclature with which I am now so familiar, including the types civil institutions and records sources (such as the “Burgerlijke Stand” – civil register), the municipal system of local governance (“gemeente”), population registers, and the Dutch words and phrases associated with genealogical research. So not only has Nol been a mentor in Dutch genealogy, I have often relied upon him as a language coach as I tried to teach myself Dutch. No Duolingo back then!

Over the next two years and over fifty emails, Nol provided me with countless records summaries: births, marriages, and deaths of ancestors and cousins from all over Noord Holland. I still have a copy of each and every one of them. I originally converted each email into a WordPerfect document. Over the years I have updated the format in which they’re saved and made sure that they remain accessible. I still go back to them often. One time several years ago I went through them again, one by one from the beginning, to ensure that I squeezed them for every drop of information I could gather.

The timing during which our paths crossed online resulted in a much longer and deeper relationship than what might have resulted had we met online nowadays. Dutch archives are amazing in how much they’ve scanned and made available online for free. Nowadays, over the course of a week I could probably find scanned online images of everything Nol found for me over that two-year period of in-person archival visits. In fact, over the last many years, I pretty much have found and downloaded digital images of all those records. So while we might still have become acquainted online, I would not have been as reliant on Nol as I might have been in the present.

Unfortunately, I’ve been unable to reciprocate Nol’s incredible kindness. He needs more Canadian relatives! Despite that, what makes me particularly happy is that our connection has evolved into much more of a friendship, particularly given that he and I connected in the early days of Facebook. Our connection has reached a point that I often forget the genealogical origins of our relationship.

My only regret is that in the 26 years I have known Nol, we have never met in person. Pre-COVID, he often visited the United States, but his travels mainly took him to the east coast. From where I am on the west coast of Canada, the eastern seaboard of the United States is about as far as Baghdad is from Amsterdam. Not exactly a trip down the street. It’s also why I don’t know your cousin in Toronto. 😂

This is why my Dutch relatives and I have such different points of view about long road trips.

I have only been to the Netherlands twice. The first time was before I met Nol. My last trip there occurred in 2017. I had hoped that I could meet Nol at that time, as I was literally going to be in Haarlem during part of my trip. Unfortunately, at the same time I was in the Netherlands, Nol was in the United States. Wat jammer, as you might say in Dutch.

I am still hoping that one day our paths might cross in real life. Nevertheless, I am grateful for all the help, mentoring, and friendship Nol has provided to me over the years. The depth of my gratitude is profound. Dank je wel, Nol!