Last changed 2026-10-06 · first mapped 2026-10-01 Follow what changes.
Comes out as a sheet for the reading room — what to ask for, who holds it, and every link written out in full.
This place
Where to begin
You know your family came from Aalten. Here is the order I would work in, cheapest and easiest first — and what to do when that runs out.
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When you run out — and you will
Everything above is what this atlas knows. It is not everything there is. Nine places in ten on this map have never been surveyed by anybody, so a gap here is usually our silence rather than the record's absence.
Do this: write to the archive named in the era table for your year, even if we hold nothing for it. Then tell us what you found — a gap somebody has personally closed is the most useful thing a stranger can give this map.
Not yet mapped. The record regions cover Istria, the Kvarner, Carnia and Dalmatia so far, and Aalten is outside them. That is a gap in this map rather than a gap in the record — and the most useful thing anyone could fill in.
No volumes recorded here yet.
The ground worth walking
Within 17 km — 8 places. These neighbours hold 371 catalogued volumes between them.
A register belongs to a parish, not to a village. A hamlet with no church of its own was written into the book of the church it walked to — and that book is catalogued under the other place's name. This is the ground to search before concluding a record does not exist.
- Varsseveld8.6 km8 volumes
- Dinxperlo9.3 km75 volumes
- Winterswijk10.9 km198 volumes
- Groenlo13.1 km79 volumes
- Etten16.8 km11 volumes
Correctly placed and unread. A gap here is this atlas's silence, not the record's — the registers may well exist and nobody has walked them.
National sources for Netherlands, unverified
From Wikidata, CC0 — the national archive and the national library where the country has one. Nobody here has opened these. The link answered when it was asked and that is the whole of what this map knows about them. They are listed because a country with no named source at all is the worse answer: 199 of the 237 countries here had nothing but the worldwide services, which cover everywhere and therefore say nothing about anywhere.
- Nationaal Archief ↗ national archive
- KB, nationale bibliotheek ↗ national library behind a bot gate, but alive
The sources for Netherlands
National and regional sources that cover this ground whether or not anybody has walked it here — which makes them the answer, not the consolation, for a place with no volumes recorded on it.
- Nationaal Archief Images, free, no account The Hague, Netherlands
The Dutch National Archives at The Hague. WieWasWie pools the civil registration indexes of every regional archive and is the usual way in; this is the institution behind the national series — the colonial, military, notarial and VOC material that no index of births and deaths reaches. - Delpher Images, free, no account The Hague, Netherlands
Dutch newspapers, books and periodicals, full-text and free. Death notices here fill gaps the registers leave. - Archieven.nl Images, free, no account
One search across more than ninety Dutch archives — 133 million person records, 59,308 inventories, and the finding aids themselves rather than only the indexed names. It is the layer above WieWasWie: WieWasWie tells you a birth was registered, this tells you which shelf the register sits on and what else that archive holds about the family. Free to search; whether the scan behind a hit opens depends on the institution that holds it, and this atlas has not walked all ninety. - WieWasWie / Open Archieven Images, free, no account The Hague, Netherlands
The Dutch civil registration indexes, pooled from every regional archive. Free, and unusually complete.
Sources that cover everywhere
Not about Netherlands in particular — these reach most of the world, which includes here. They are listed after the local sources because a body that holds this ground's own paper is a better first stop than one that holds a little of everywhere's. Worth knowing they exist all the same.
- Internet Archive Images, free, no account
Full-text search across millions of digitised books, including parish histories, nobiliaries and local monographs that name ordinary people. - Arolsen Archives Images, free, no account
The former International Tracing Service. Concentration camp, forced labour and displaced-persons records for some seventeen and a half million people, free and fully indexed. - BillionGraves Images, free, no account
GPS-tagged headstone photographs. Smaller than Find a Grave but its coordinates are per-stone, which Find a Grave's often are not. - Find a Grave Images, free, no account
Volunteer-photographed headstones and cemetery indexes, worldwide, with very uneven coverage. Owned by Ancestry but free to read. - WikiTree Images, free, no account
A free, single shared tree with an unusually strong sourcing culture. Not a record source. - Yad Vashem — Central Database of Shoah Victims' Names Images, free, no account
Names and testimony pages for victims of the Shoah, free. - FamilySearch Images, free, account needed
The largest free collection of record images and indexes in the world. A free account is required, and a minority of images are restricted to Family History Centres and affiliate libraries. - Geni Images, free, account needed
One shared world tree. Useful for finding other researchers on the same line; not a record source, and its assertions are only as good as their citations. - JewishGen Images, free, account needed
The central Jewish genealogy resource — town-level KehilaLinks, burial and Holocaust databases, and revision lists for eastern Europe. - Geneanet Partly free, partly paid
Member-contributed trees and transcriptions, strongest in France. Much is free; a Premium tier gates some search and images. - Ancestry Images, behind a paywall
The largest commercial collection. Strong on the English-speaking world, censuses and immigration; weak on continental parish registers. - MyHeritage Images, behind a paywall
Commercial, with a large tree network and good European newspaper and directory coverage. Search is free; opening a record is not.
FamilySearch collections that reach here
A collection is a claim over an area, not a book standing in this town — so these are ranked by how specifically they reach Aalten. A free account is needed to open the images, and some are restricted to a Family History Centre.
Worth searching, and worth knowing it is a national index rather than a local one.
- Netherlands, Archival Indexes, Vital Records, 1600-2000 ↗ 1600–2000 46,579,094 records 85 km
- Netherlands, Archival Indexes, Population Registers ↗ 1600–2000 20,361,614 records 85 km
- Netherlands, Archival Indexes, Public Records ↗ 1600–2000 5,886,927 records 85 km
- Netherlands, Noord-Holland, Civil Registration, 1739-1951 ↗ 1739–1951 1,979,771 records 85 km
- Netherlands, Births and Baptisms, 1564-1910 ↗ 1564–1910 1,572,754 records 85 km
- Netherlands, Marriages, 1565-1892 ↗ 1565–1892 458,519 records 85 km
- Netherlands, Deaths and Burials, 1668-1945 ↗ 1668–1945 211,659 records 85 km
- Netherlands, Gelderland Civil Registration, 1800-1952 ↗ 1800–1952 183,873 records 85 km
- Netherlands, Zuid-Holland, Civil Registration, 1679-1942 ↗ 1679–1942 155,686 records 85 km
- Netherlands, Dutch Military Records, 1813-1924 ↗ 1813–1924 75,445 records 85 km
- Netherlands, Overijssel, Civil Registration, 1811-1960 ↗ 1811–1960 2,085 records 85 km
- Netherlands, Army Service Records, 1807-1929 ↗ 1807–1929 0 records 85 km
- Netherlands, Census and Population Registers, 1574-1940 ↗ 1574–1940 0 records 85 km
- Netherlands, Drenthe, Church Records, 1580-1911 ↗ 1580–1911 0 records 85 km
- Netherlands, Drenthe, Civil Registration, 1811-1942 ↗ 1811–1942 0 records 85 km
- Netherlands, Friesland, Church Records, 1543-1911 ↗ 1543–1911 0 records 85 km
- Netherlands, Friesland, Civil Registration, 1811-1950 ↗ 1811–1950 0 records 85 km
- Netherlands, Gelderland, Church Records, 1405-1966 ↗ 1405–1966 0 records 85 km
- Netherlands, Groningen, Church Records, 1595-1864 ↗ 1595–1864 0 records 85 km
- Netherlands, Groningen, Civil Registration, 1811-1940 ↗ 1811–1940 0 records 85 km
- Netherlands, Limburg Parish Register Transcripts, 1562-1822 ↗ 1562–1822 0 records 85 km
- Netherlands, Limburg, Certificates of Nationality, 1860-1913 ↗ 1860–1913 0 records 85 km
- Netherlands, Limburg, Church Records, 1542-1910 ↗ 1542–1910 0 records 85 km
- Netherlands, Limburg, Civil Registration, 1792-1963 ↗ 1792–1963 0 records 85 km
- Netherlands, Noord-Brabant, Church Records, 1473-1965 ↗ 1473–1965 0 records 85 km
…and 12 more.
Everything in Netherlands · All 40266 places · Correct something on this page