Find your Dutch ancestors on the internet

As I said in an earlier post, your starting point for finding your ancestors online should be Genlias.

But not all places have data in Genlias. Notable omissions are the three largest Dutch cities, Amsterdam, Rotterdam and The Hague, though Amsterdam is expected to be included in the near future.

Some Amsterdam records can be found on the website of the Amsterdam city archive. The most important are the baptisms (1564-1811). Their website is only available in Dutch.

Rotterdam has the excellent Rotterdam Municipal Archives' Digital Family Tree. Unfortunately, the search interface is entirely in Dutch (but the introduction page is available in English). The website contains most of the church books (covering the period 1573-1811) and a large part of the civil register (1811-1950).

The Hague has created a virtual study center, that should eventually have the same information available as their study center in the The Hague city archive. It currently has scans of most of their civil registry records. The website is hard to navigate, there is no searchable index, and it does not have an English interface.

In addition to Genlias, there are many regional databases. We just list the most important ones here: Tresoar (Friesland), Drenlias (Drenthe), Zeeuwen gezocht (Zeeland) and Brabants Historisch Informatie Centrum (Brabant).

An index to the many available online source transcriptions and indexes can be found on Digital Resources Netherlands and Belgium.