Over the past few weeks, I have been thoroughly reviewing the burial registers of Tilburg. Not because I was looking for additional information about my own family members, many of whom came from this city in the Dutch province of Noord-Brabant. No, I wanted to get to know these registers better. Burial registers are often Read more…
The decrees of the Council of Trent (1545-1563) were the start of a formal and structural registration of life events in the Roman Catholic Church. Soon after, the Dutch Reformed Church and other denominations started recording births, marriages and deaths too. Other – and sometimes older – documents might also refer to life events, for Read more…
Every time I make a heritage trip with foreign clients, one of their questions is: “Can we visit the graves of our Dutch ancestors?” My answer is in many occasions painful. Old graves often no longer exist. Public and private graves According to Dutch law two types of graves exist: public graves and private graves. Read more…