Deciphering a Dutch population register

Question

Hi forum,

I've got a population document for some dutch ancestors.

Questions:

1. In the age column (6th from left), at the bottom, it looks like 4 children are all given an age of 1.  I know these children were in fact their children, however, these were not quadruplets.  They were all born at least a year apart.  Am I mis-understanding the nature of that column?  Why would they all be listed as 1 day old?

2.  Were these population registers done after a birth in a family?  In other words, to "register" a new person in a home?  Or were these done similar to U.S. population census in that they were done village/town wide on a predetermined period of time?

Thank you.

Answer 1

Do you have a link to the original page? It is impossible to read it.

The information in these registers vary with time. My first impression is that it is an older one, just listing the persons. Newer ones were often kept up-to-date, including moves to a different address (=page).

Comments

I found the original, https://www.wiewaswie.nl/nl/detail/9792469 . It is for the period 1840-1850 and the village of Volkel, the streetname is Schadron, and it is kept up to date. The four children were added upon their birth registration, at that moment 1 day ('1 dag') old, with their birthdates in the last column. Niclolaas was a farmer ('bouman'), Theodorus a shopkeeper ('winkelier') He was born not in the province of Zeeland but in the nearby village of that name. They were all Roman Catholic.

The six columns in the middle give sex and marital status. male on the left page and female on the right, and then split into married, widowed and unmarried.

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Wow, thank you very much for the explanations. I somehow managed to completely miss the 4 children's birthdates in the last column.

Very informative, I really appreciate it!

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Sorry, one last question if you don't mind.

So this was basically a document that was added to, over time (and perhaps even by different record keepers) and not done all at one time.

For example, when the document was first started, Theodorus was 66(?) years old, Lucia was 59, etc. and each of his grandchildren (from Nicholas and Wilhelmina) were added to this document when they were born, done so over the several years.

In other words, by the time the last child was added, in 1847, Theodorus would have been (at least) 72 because the first child was listed in 1846 and who knows how many years before that, this document was started.

Is that about how these registries worked?

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This document was started in 1840, and children were added as they were born. It is a page for the adress. Had they moved and a new inhabitant moved in it would have been adapted (by crossing out the old inhabitants and adding the new ones, with the date and the new and former adresses added).

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The family of Nicolaas Denissen did move out to "Noord Amerika" in 1848 as recorded in the rightmost column. Entries of all family members are crossed out. Emigration confirmed by https://www.nationaalarchief.nl/onderzoeken/index/nt00254?activeTab=nt&qf_nt-rdf_pla_naam=Uden&searchTerm=emigranten%20noord-brabant&sortering=prs_achternaam&volgorde=asc

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Got it.  Thanks for the additional clarification.  I appreciate it!

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The family of Nicolaas Denissen did move out to "Noord Amerika" in 1848

Yes.  They arrived in Boston on 05 May 1848 as part of a 3 ship Catholic immigration to the U.S.  The group they were with from the ship Libra was going to north eastern Wisconsin (Fox River Valley area and nearby).  Nicolaas's wife Wilhelmina died in Buffalo enroute and is the brick wall I'm working on.

Tangent aside, thank you for the reply and taking the time to help with this question about these early Dutch records.  I appreciate it!

Answer 2

To answer your question about the purpose of these registers.  They were registers that would be kept up to date over usually a 10 year period, so yes, births would have a person added, deaths would have them crossed out with a death date added, and even if they moved residence would be recorded, if they moved out of the area, they would be crossed out and noted to where they moved.  This way there would be a complete record of who was residing in the area at one one time
 

See Population Registers - Introduction