Centraal Bureau voor Genealogie

The website

The Centraal Bureau voor Genealogie (Central Bureau for Genealogy, CBG) is a documentation and information centre for Dutch family history and heraldry. They are funded partly by the government, partly by contributors. The CBG administer the persoonskaarten of deceased people and several private genealogical collections. They also collect just about everything related to genealogy themselves.

Part of their collection is indexed on their website, and for some collections scans are available online.

What do they have?

An index to parts of their collection, and scans of their collection Familieadvertenties (newspaper ads announcing births, deaths, marriages or other family events) until 1970, some bidprentjes (mortuary cards that are commonly handed out on funerals in the Catholic church), and the Algemeen Politieblad 1852-1883 (General Police periodical, a periodical for Dutch policemen containing among others information on promotions and transfers of police personnel, wanted criminals, victims of crime, and deported aliens).

We will have a closer look at some of these sources in future posts.

Is there an English interface?

Partly. Click English in the top right. Much, but not all, of the website is translated. The search interface is almost entirely in Dutch.

How do I use it?

Enter a surname or place name in the search box on the top right of the home page and press the zoeken button. For surnames with an infix, type a comma behind the name and then the infix: kampen, van.

On the result page we see a large number of buttons: One button for each indexed collection. The gray buttons are for collections without results, green buttons for collections that do have results. A small icon on the button means there are scans available. In the example (click image to enlarge) I searched for Kampen, van, and I found three gray and 15 green buttons, three of them with scans.

Click on a button for details about the collection. In most cases, all you get is a call number, and you have to travel to the study room of the CBG in The Hague to find out more, but there are a few cases where you can find out more online.

Especially interesting is the Fotocollectie (photo collection). Click the button to see a list of people whose photo portrait is in the CBG collection, and then click the small details button to see the photo. Many of the photos are cuttings from newspapers or magazines.

The Biografische index (biographical index) is an index to several biographical reference works. All the reference works are available in the study room in The Hague, but some of the books can be consulted on Google Books or are available in shops like Amazon.

When you click the bidprentjes or algemeen politieblad button, you will get a list of names, with an afbeelding button that will take you to the scan. For Familieadvertenties there is only one afbeelding button, and you will have to browse through all scans on your surname - Familieadvertenties are only indexed on surname.

I clicked on Bidprentjes and found the results displayed below (click image to enlarge).

There are 100 bidprentjes on the name van Kampen, and they are available in the study room in The Hague on microfiches 2798 and 2799. Two of them are scanned and online. I want to see the bidprentje of Dirk van Kampen, so I click on the Afbeelding button behind his name. I had to log in (if you don't have an account yet you will have to register first), and had a look at the preview image.

To see the entire image, you have to click the checkbox with the text Om het beeld volledig te kunnen bekijken ga ik akkoord met het afschrijven van eenheden (To view the image I agree with taking units out of my account), and then on the link Volledige beeld bekijken (View full image). After clicking this link, my account is charged and the image displayed.

How much does it cost?

Searching the index is free. Viewing and downloading the portraits is also free. There are charges for viewing and downloading scans. You need to buy a number of units, and you will be charged units when you view scans - from 4 units per page for familieadvertenties to 20 units per scan for bidprentjes. Price per unit depends on how many units you buy and whether you pay contribution. Contributors pay €4.50 per 100 units, €8.10 per 200 units, or €18.00 per 500 units. Contributors also get 500 units per year free. Contribution is currently €52.50 per year (outside The Netherlands). Non-contributors pay €5.00 per 100 units, €9.00 per 200 units, or €20.00 per 500 units. Unused units are valid for one year. Paid scans can also be consulted for one year.

Paid scans are for private use only. For publication you need to obtain permission from the CBG.

Future plans

The CBG plans to make more scanned collections available online.

Conclusion

The study room of the CBG has always been a goldmine for people in search of their Dutch ancestors. A lot of their information is not available elsewhere. It is great to see some of that information available online. I hope the CBG will soon start making their other collections available on their website.

The English search interface and the search instructions should be improved, to make the collections accessible to people outside The Netherlands. Registration is also not possible in English.

The fee structure is confusing, and this will get worse if other collections are added, each with their own pricing. The CBG should really revise their pricing strategy.

Dutch archive news roundup: April 2008

News from the Dutch archives:

• Several archives, museums, and other institutions cooperated to created the Image Bank WW2, with thousands of photographs from the second world war.
• The Central Bureau for Genealogy published scans of parts of their collection online. This is a paid service. We will soon look at the online collection in our online records series.
• Tresoar added 1750 photos of Jewish graves from Friesland to their website.
• New records on the website of the Amsterdam city archive: archiefkaarten. These cards were copies of persoonskaarten that were made when the city of Amsterdam had to hand over the persoonskaart to another authority, usually because the subject of the card died or moved to another city. One million cards, created between 1939 and 1960, are now online.

Tulips

Dutch tulips

Tulips here in Holland are already past their prime (high season is mid to late April), but in the other Holland tulip time starts now: The annual Tulip Time Festival starts tomorrow in Holland, Michigan. With tulips, klompen dances, krakelingen, and parades, Holland celebrates its Dutch roots between tomorrow and 10 May.

Meanwhile, Ottawa's Tulip Festival started today and will last until 19 May. The origins of the festival is a gift of princess Juliana of The Netherlands. In 1945, she presented Canada with a gift of 100,000 tulip bulbs, as a thank-you for providing a safe haven to the Dutch royal family during the war and for the role the Canadian army played in the liberation of The Netherlands. Now, more than three million tulips bloom, and an estimated 600,000 people from all over the world will visit the festival.

Links:

• Tulip Time official website
• Tulip Time brochure [PDF]
• Tulip Festival official website

Symbol of Home stands tall

"Anyone new to Oak Harbor has likely noticed some pretty strange looking names while combing through the phonebook — Beeksma, Zylstra, Nienhuis, VanderHoek, Vanderlinder, Vande Werfhorst, and every Vander in between.

But in Oak Harbor, where Dutch immigrants were among the pioneers making early claim, these surnames are as common as Smith and Jones. That’s why windmills make appearances at pocket parks around town and on postcards sent to friends."

Symbol of home stands tall, an article in the Whidbey News Time, talks about the Dutch community of Oak Harbor (Island County, WA), the history of their Dutch windmill in Windjammer Park, and the annual Holland Happening Festival, a festival celebrating their Dutch roots that took place this weekend:

"Holland Happening, that is when the food of the homeland is enjoyed, tulips are in bloom, klompen are stompin’ and the Oak Harbor windmill stands tall in its glory."

Another article appeared yesterday in the same newspaper: City goes Dutch for Holland Happening. This article has some details about the program.

The Whidbey News Times is a newspaper from Whidbey Island, Island County, WA.

Online records: Beeldbank Amsterdam

The website

When we discussed the archiefbank from the Amsterdam city archive I promised we would look at their image database in a separate post. So, today we will take a look at the beeldbank (image database) of the Amsterdam city archive.

What do they have?

Images. The database contains currently 237,298 images, most of them of Amsterdam: 180,000 photos, 12,000 prints, almost 11,000 drawings, 30,000 designs of buildings, and a few other objects. The online collection is growing all the time, so by the time you read this the numbers may already be higher.

Is there an English interface?

No, the interface is only available in Dutch.

How do I use it?

Fill in your search phrase in the search box on the top, and optionally a period (the fields van jaar, from year, and tot jaar, until year, will become visible when you start typing in the search box) and press the red zoek button. To refine your search, check zoek in resultaat (search within result) before entering another search phrase. Check nieuwe zoekopdracht (new search) again to start a new search.

Click on an image in the search results to enlarge.In the larger image there are buttons to the left of the picture to zoom in and out. Click the cross (on the right of the red bar above the image) to close the image and go back to the search results.

How much does it cost?

Browsing the collection is free, but there are charges for downloading (currently €16.30 per image), ordering prints, and publication (€75 for publication on a website). See the price list for details.

Future plans

New images are added all the time.

Conclusion

If your ancestors were from Amsterdam, or if you want to see what the Dutch capital looked like in the past, the beeldbank is a site you should visit.

Where most image databases offer the option to download low resolution scans for personal use for free, this beeldbank charges a hefty €16.30 per image (for high resolution scans). Free download of low-res scans would be a great enhancement. Another welcome addition would be an English interface.

Newsletter: April issue available

Subscribers of the Trace your Dutch roots newsletter have received the April issue today. Contents of this issue:

• Sources for Dutch genealogy
• Monitoring Genlias
• Offline Dutch genealogy

The newsletter is also available online from the newsletter archive.

1582-1701 – A Very Important Period

Carolyn L. Barkley writes on GenealogyandFamilyHistory.com in her article 1752 – A Very Important Date about the introduction of the Gregorian calendar. England and its colonies introduced the calendar rather late, in 1752. The former New Netherland colony, however, had already used the new calendar since the beginning of the Dutch settlement:

"Dutch settlers along the Hudson River in New York and northern New Jersey were already using the Gregorian calendar when they came to America. After 1660, when the English took over the Dutch settlements, the civil and church recorders in Dutch towns continued the use of the Gregorian calendar despite the British government and its use of the Julian calendar for almost an additional one hundred years."

In some parts of The Netherlands, the Gregorian calendar was introduced in 1582, shortly after the new calendar was decreed by Pope Gregory XIII. But it took a long time before the new calendar was used everywhere in the Dutch Republic. The last province to use the Gregorian calendar was Drenthe, in 1701. For well over a century, the old and the new calendar were used side by side in The Netherlands. Many documents from this era had a dual date: 9/19 October 1660. Other documents used abbreviations like O.S., S.V. (stilo vetere) or S.A. (stilo antiquo) for the old style (Julian) calendar, and N.S. or S.N. (stilo novo) for the new style (Gregorian) calendar.

The new calendar was introduced on the following dates:

• Zeeland and Brabant: 25 December 1582 followed 14 December.
• Holland: 12 January 1583 followed 1 January.
• Groningen city: 11 March 1583 followed 28 February. Groningen went back to old style in 1594: 11 November 1594 followed 20 November.
• Gelderland: 12 July 1700 followed 30 June.
• Utrecht and Overijssel: 12 December 1700 followed 30 November.
• Friesland and Groningen (city and province): 12 January 1701 followed 31 December 1700.
• Drenthe: 12 May 1701 followed 30 April.

I don't know when Limburg introduced the Gregorian calendar, but I expect this happened in the 1580s.

Before 1700 the difference between the calendars was 10 days, after 1700 11 days (1700 was a leap year in the Julian calendar but not in the Gregorian calendar).

Years commonly started on 1 January since at least the late 16th century, but there are exceptions throughout the first half of the 17th century. In these cases, the year would start at 25 March, Christmas, or Easter.