DUTCH ANCESTRY

• Drente
• Flevoland
• Friesland
• Gelderland
• Groningen
• Limburg
• Noord Brabant
• Noord Holland
• Overijssel
• Utrecht
• Zeeland
• Zuid Holland

Each province is subdivided into municipalities. Usually each municipality is further made up of villages, cities, and towns. Sometimes small places are absorbed by larger areas much like San Jose, or Los Angeles, has absorbed the little towns that used to surround it. Overschie was an independent town before it was absorbed by Rotterdam in 1940. Therefore, municipal boundaries in the 1850s were more numerous than they are today.

Finding the proper locality is easy when using the Family History Library Catalog online. Just go to www.familysearch.org. Click on the blue lettered Library Catalog as shown on the image below. Then select the option "Place Search" from the drop down list of search option available in the catalog.

Type in the word Netherlands or any other country, state, or county in which you are interested onto the template provided and click on the link (underlined word Netherlands). A listing of all topics will be given.

There is a handy tool available in the previous FamilySearch site. Look at the image above at the blue button that says "Go to previous site." In the previous FamilySearch Site there is the word "Library" on a tab across the top. Click on the tab and scroll down to "Library Catalog." Again do the "Place Search" for the Netherlands by typing in that word in the top template line. Click on the blue hypertext link Netherlands.

Once you are at the Netherlands page, notice that in the upper right hand corner is a grey button "View Related Places." Click that button. All the present and earlier provinces of the country will be listed. Often, even if you have a misspelling of the name of a province, you can recognize it this way. Click on the one you wish to study. Select Friesland, for example.

Now all the subjects for the province of Friesland will come up. But say, for example, you believe you know a municipality. Once again click on the "View Related Places" button. Now all the municipalities for Friesland show up--all 468 of them.

This is a wonderful feature of the Family History Library former version. I hope it eventually makes its way to the new version. There are sources under each level of jurisdiction. In later lessons we will learn how to know which locality will contain the records necessary to match the goal you are pursuing. This same process can be undertaken for other countries as well. Try experimenting on your own country.