Church Records (c.1545-1811) 

In the period before 1811 the pastors of the various churches kept registers of baptism, marriage and death (DTB registers). The oldest registers, which are form parish of Deventer, Maria-church, date back to 1545. The starting dates of these registers vary by church and township. The book "Repertorium DTB"(Concise Repertory of Dutch parish registers), issued by the Central Bureau for Genealogy in 1969, contains a complete list of the registers in the archives. The book has an introduction and an English en German explanation for the abbreviations. Many registers were handed over to the civil authorities in the French period (1795-1813).

To read the DTB registers you often need a palaeographic background. The handwritten papers, often in Latin, from the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries are very hard to read, making research very time-consuming. Fortunately many archives are now preparing indices with all the information from these DTB-registers.

Related Resources:

Translation of Dutch Words in Church Records
A list of Dutch words and phrases commonly found in 17th century church records along with their English translations.

Reformed Dutch Church of New Netherland/New York
Lorine McGinnis Schulze has put the marriage records of this New York church online for the period 1639-1801.

Netherlands Church Records
Records from many Netherlands churches have been microfilmed by the Family History Library and are available for searching through your local Family History Center.

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