WieWasWie presents millions of records about persons in the past, aggregated from a large number of Dutch archive organizations participating in WieWasWie. You'll find civil registration records, population registers, church registers and more! In addition, WieWasWie offers so called user generated content: family trees and biographies created by other users. User-generated content is visible to others only if it has been made public by the user.
The most important data from an individual document are shown on the documentdetailpages.If available WieWasWie also shows the scans of the original documents or certificates. With these you forefathers
The database of WieWasWie is refreshed on a daily basis with new data and archives. At this stage WieWasWie contains data from:
- Civil registration certificates (birth, marriage, and death)
- Passenger registers Holland America Line (HAL)
- Population registers
- Church books (baptisms, marriages and burials)
- Statements of succession
- VOC Sea-Voyagers
- Family announcements
- Military sources
- Institutional register
- Several (small) collections
Civil registration (in Dutch: burgerlijke stand) is the most important source for basic data about people in the Netherlands from the 19th and 20th centuries. In these civil registers, authorities recorded information about births, marriages, divorces, and deaths.
From 1850 until the present day The Netherlands has a continuous population register in which municipalities keep track of who is living within the municipal boundaries. The registers give us a history of the joys and sorrows of life at a particular street address.
Since the 16th century churches register baptisms, marriages and burials. They contain important information about the people concerned: like family names, names of the parents, dates and places.
Statements of succession (in Dutch: Memories van successie) handle estates. These records may lead you to the possessions of family members and what happened to these after his or her passing away.
If one of your forefathers worked for the Dutch East India Company (in Dutch: Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie (VOC)) there is a big chance that his name is registered in one of the ship registers.These registers contain information concerning all kinds of sea voyagers on ships that sailed to the East between 1700 and 1795.
Announcements of birth, marriage and deaths from newspapers are very informative for your research on recent generations, but they might also provide you information about the lifestyle and social class of your ancestors. The publication of announcements in the newspapers was introduced from France in the 18th century.
Military sources often contain physical descriptions to provide you with an image of your ancestors. And they give you information about the ability of that person to fulfill the military services in the five years after that momentum.
This document type contains data from registers from institutions, like prisons, hospitals. At this moment it contains more than 455 thousand thieves, murderers, poachers, arsonists and more.
Are you looking for passengers who traveled with the Holland America Line (HAL) between 1900 and 1969? From now on you can view the passenger lists via the Rotterdam City Archives and WieWasWie websites.
