Dutch naming traditions can be both your greatest friend and foe when researching historic populations. As couples named their children after their parents, this often meant several nephews and nieces shared the same first names. It also means that if you somehow end up with a father that shares his first name with his son,…
Month: January 2020
In November I started with a new job, a PhD at the Netherlands Demographical Institute (NIDI). Hermen Hermens Boschman, my mothers’ mothers’ mothers’ mothers’ fathers’ mothers mothers’ father, made a similar fresh start during the early 18th century. As the documents I recently uncovered in the archives match my current life very well, this seems…