Record Atlas
5 eras · 1580–2026 · 625 places

The Netherlands

Holland, Utrecht, Gelderland, Brabant, Limburg, Friesland. Which empire held this ground in which years — and, the part that matters, which archive that means.

Where researchers lose records here

1795–1813 — THE HINGE OF DUTCH RESEARCH. Civil registration — the burgerlijke stand — starts with the French, and the date differs by where you are: 1796 in the parts annexed early, in Limburg and Zeeuws-Vlaanderen, and 1811 for most of the country. Before that date there is no state record of a birth, only a baptism.

Whose archive this ground was

YearsWho held itWhose archive that means
1580–1795 Dutch Republic WieWasWie / Open Archieven · FamilySearch · Delpher

Before the state counted anybody, the churches did: the DTB books — doop, trouw, begraaf — kept by the Reformed church, and separately by Catholic, Lutheran, Mennonite and Jewish congregations. They are in the provincial and municipal archives, not in one national series, and a family that changed church changes book.
1795–1813 Batavian Republic, then French annexation WieWasWie / Open Archieven · FamilySearch

THE HINGE OF DUTCH RESEARCH. Civil registration — the burgerlijke stand — starts with the French, and the date differs by where you are: 1796 in the parts annexed early, in Limburg and Zeeuws-Vlaanderen, and 1811 for most of the country. Before that date there is no state record of a birth, only a baptism.
1813–1940 Kingdom of the Netherlands WieWasWie / Open Archieven · FamilySearch · Delpher

Civil registration continues unbroken and is indexed almost completely on WieWasWie, free. The population registers from 1850 are the other half of it: they follow a household from address to address, which is how a family is traced between the ten-yearly certificates.
1940–1945 German occupation WieWasWie / Open Archieven · Arolsen Archives · FamilySearch

The civil registers survive; the population registers were used to find people, and the Amsterdam registry was bombed by the resistance in 1943 for that reason. Arolsen holds the records of those deported.
1945–2026 Kingdom of the Netherlands WieWasWie / Open Archieven · FamilySearch

Certificates become public after 100 years for births, 75 for marriages and 50 for deaths, so the open end of the series moves forward every January.

The rings are approximate — deliberately. They exist to shade which filing system a place fell under, not to adjudicate a border. A place near a ring's edge should be checked against both neighbours.

See the whole span, 1580–2026, on the map →

The map takes a range, and a range that crosses one of the rows above is where records get lost: the family never moved, and the archive on the far side of the handover will tell you it holds nothing.

625 places on this ground

The 200 carrying the most collections are listed; 425 more stand on this ground. Every place has them all.

147 FamilySearch collections reach this ground

Ranked with the regional ones first — a collection for a province is usually a better lead than a national index, though the national index is often where a name is actually written down. A free account opens the images.

…and 87 more.

All record regions · The map