Netherlands Emigration and Immigration

Online Records

 * 1600-2000 at FamilySearch - How to Use this Collection; index & images
 * 1620-1960 Passenger lists, Digital Resources Netherlands and Belgium In the left sidebar, select "Passenger lists" - until 1736 or after 1736
 * 1633-1795 Netherlands, Dutch East India Company Crew Index, 1633-1795 at Ancestry; index only ($)
 * 1831-1877 Nederland. Emigranten naar overzeesche gebiedsdelen, 1831-1876 (Emigrants to Overseas Territories) 1831-1877
 * 1890-1960 Passenger Lists Leaving UK 1890-1960 at FindMyPast; index & images ($); includes those with Destination of Netherlands
 * 1900-1974 at FamilySearch - How to Use this Collection; images only
 * 1904-1914 Germany, Bremen Passenger Departure Lists, 1904-1914 at MyHeritage; index & images ($); includes those with Destination of Netherlands
 * Immigrant Ships Transcribers Guild Choose a volume and then choose Netherlands under "Listed by Port of Departure" or "Listed by Port of Arrival".

Province Records

 * 1839-1920 Emigrants from Zeeland (1826) 1839-1920 (1950)
 * 1860-1913 at FamilySearch - How to Use this Collection; images only
 * 1914-1919 Netherlands, Tilburg Emigration Records, 1914 - 1919 at MyHeritge; index & images ($)
 * Emigrants from Texel, Noord-Holland
 * Limburgse Landverhuizers (Limburgs Emigrants)

Additional online sources unique to each country of destination are listed below.

Finding the Town of Origin in Italy
If you are using emigration/immigration records to find the name of your ancestors' town in Italy, see Netherlands Finding Town of Origin for additional research strategies.

Netherlands Emigration and Immigration
"Emigration" means moving out of a country. "Immigration" means moving into a country. (See Immigration into the Netherlands.) Emigration and immigration sources list the names of people leaving (emigrating) or arriving (immigrating) in the country. These sources may be passenger lists, permissions to emigrate, or records of passports issued. The information in these records may include the emigrants’ names, ages, occupations, destinations, and places of origin or birthplaces. Sometimes they also show family groups.

Emigration from the Netherlands

 * Emigration from the Netherlands has been occurring for at least four hundred years, and may be traced back to the international presence of the Dutch Empire and its monopoly on mercantile shipping in many parts of the world. Dutch people settled permanently in a number of former Dutch colonies or trading enclaves abroad, namely the Dutch Caribbean, the Dutch Cape Colony, the Dutch East Indies, Suriname, and New Netherland.
 * Since the end of the Second World War, the largest proportion of Dutch emigrants have moved to Anglophone countries, namely Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and the United States, mainly seeking better employment opportunities. Postwar emigration from the Netherlands peaked between 1948–63, with occasional spikes in the 1980s and the mid-2000s.

Brazil Online Sources

 * Brazil Emigration and Immigration – Wiki page with additional larger databases which also include Dutch

Brazil Background

 * The Dutch were among the first Europeans settling in Brazil during the 17th century. They controlled the northern coast of Brazil from 1630 to 1654. A significant number of Dutch immigrants arrived in that period. The state of Pernambuco (then Captaincy of Pernambuco) was once a colony of the Dutch Republic from 1630 to 1661. There are a considerable number of people who are descendants of the Dutch colonists in Paraíba (for example in Frederikstad, today João Pessoa), Pernambuco, Alagoas and Rio Grande do Norte.
 * During the 19th and 20th century, Dutch immigrants from the Netherlands immigrated to the Brazil's Center-South, founded a few cities and prospered. The majority of Dutch Brazilians reside in Espírito Santo, Paraná, Rio Grande do Sul, Pernambuco and São Paulo. There are also small groups of Dutch Brazilians in Goiás, Ceará, Rio Grande do Norte, Mato Grosso do Sul, Minas Gerais and Rio de Janeiro.
 * After the devastation caused by World War II, the Dutch government stimulated emigration to Australia, Brazil, and Canada. Brazil was the only nation to allow the arrival of large groups of Catholics. With the consent of the Brazilian government, the Catholic Dutch Farmers and Market-gardeners Union (Dutch: Katholieke Nederlandse Boeren- en Tuindersbond) coordinated the emigration process. A group of approximately 5000 migrants from the province of North Brabant arrived in Brazil.

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Canada Online Sources

 * War Brides passenger Lists
 * Canada and U.S., Dutch Emigrants, 1946-1963, at Ancestry ($), index/images
 * Canada Emigration and Immigration – Wiki page with additional larger databases which also include the Netherlands

Canada Background

 * The first Dutch people to come to Canada were Dutch Americans among the United Empire Loyalists.
 * The largest wave was in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century when large numbers of Dutch helped settle the Canadian west. During this period significant numbers also settled in major cities like Toronto.
 * While interrupted by the First World War this migration returned in the 1920s, but again halted during the Great Depression and Second World War. After World War II a large number of Dutch immigrants moved to Canada, including a number of war brides of the Canadian soldiers who liberated the Netherlands. There were officially 1,886 Dutch war brides to Canada, ranking second after British war brides..
 * Dutch emigration to Canada peaked between 1951 and 1953, when an average of 20,000 people per year made the crossing. This exodus followed the harsh years in Europe as a result of the Second World War. Relations between the two countries specially blossomed because it was mainly Canadian troops who liberated the Netherlands in 1944-1945. According to Statistics Canada in 2016, some 1,111,645 Canadians identified their ethnic origin to be Dutch.

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Chile Online Sources

 * Chile Emigration and Immigration – Wiki page with additional larger databases which also include the Netherlands

Chile Background

 * The emigration from the Netherlands to Chile was in 1895. A dozen Dutch families settled between 1895 and 1897 in Chiloé Island. In the same period Egbert Hageman arrived in Chile. With his family, 14 April 1896, settling in Rio Gato, near Puerto Montt. In addition, family Wennekool which inaugurated the Dutch colonization of Villarrica.
 * On 4 May 1903, a group of over 200 Dutch emigrants sailed on the steamship "Oropesa" shipping company "Pacific Steam Navigation Company", from La Rochelle (La Pallice) in France. The majority of migrants were born in the Netherlands: 35% was from North Holland and South Holland, 13% of North Brabant, 9% of Zeeland and equal number of Gelderland. On 5 June, they arrived by train to their final destination, the city of Pitrufquén, located south of Temuco, near the hamlet of Donguil.
 * Another group of Dutchmen arrived shortly after to Talcahuano, in the "Oravi" and the "Orissa". The Dutch colony in Donguil was christened "New Transvaal Colony". There, more than 500 families settled in order to start a new life.
 * Between 7 February 1907 and 18 February 1909, it is estimated that about 3,000 Boers (Dutch farmers from South Africa) arrived in Chile.
 * It is estimated that as many as 50,000 Chileans are of Dutch descent, most of them located in Malleco, Gorbea, Pitrufquén, Faja Maisan and around Temuco.

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Indonesia Online Sources

 * Bridging the gap in Dutch-Indonesian Genealogy (theindoproject.org)
 * Indonesia Emigration and Immigration – Wiki page with additional larger databases which also include the Netherlands

Indonesia Background

 * The Indo people or Indos, are Eurasian people living in or connected with Indonesia. In its narrowest sense, the term refers to people in the former Dutch East Indies who held European legal status but were of mixed Dutch and indigenous Indonesian descent as well as their descendants today. The European ancestry of these people was predominantly Dutch, but also included Portuguese, British, French, Belgian, German and others.
 * In the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia), the Dutch heavily interacted with the indigenous population, and as European women were almost non-existent, many Dutchmen married native women. This created a new group of people, the Dutch-Eurasians also known as 'Indos' or 'Indo-Europeans'.
 * During the 1620s, Jan Pieterszoon Coen in particular insisted that families and orphans be sent from Holland to populate the colonies. As a result, a number of single women were sent and an orphanage was established in Batavia to raise Dutch orphan girls to become East India brides. There was a large number of women from the Netherlands recorded as marrying in the years around 1650. Almost half of them were single women from the Netherlands marrying for the first time. There were still considerable numbers of women sailing eastwards to the Indies at this time.
 * Few European women came to the Indies during the Dutch East India Company period. There is evidence of considerable care by officers of the Dutch East India Company for their illegitimate Eurasian children: boys were sometimes sent to the Netherlands to be educated, and sometimes never returned to Indonesia.
 * In the 1890s, there were 62,000 civilian "Europeans" in the Dutch East Indies, most of them Eurasians, making up less than half of one per cent of the population. Indo influence waned following World War I and the opening of the Suez Canal, when there was a substantial influx of white Dutch families.

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South Africa Online Sources

 * South Africa Emigration and Immigration – Wiki page with additional larger databases which also include Netherlands

South Africa Background

 * The Cape of Good Hope was first settled by Europeans under the auspices of the Dutch East India Company, which established a station there in 1652 to provide its outward bound fleets with fresh provisions. The company offered grants of farmland to its employees under the condition they would cultivate grain for company warehouses. Prospective employees had to be married Dutch citizens, considered "of good character" by the Company, and had to commit to spending at least twenty years on the African continent. In 1691, there were at least 660 Dutch people living at the Cape of Good Hope. This had increased to about 13,000 by the end of Dutch rule.
 * Since the late nineteenth century, the term Afrikaner has been evoked to describe white South Africans descended from the Cape's original Dutch-speaking settlers, regardless of ethnic heritage.
 * Another wave of Dutch immigration to South Africa occurred in the wake of World War II, when many Dutch citizens were moving abroad to escape housing shortages and depressed economic opportunities at home. South Africa registered a net gain of 45,000 Dutch immigrants between 1950 and 2001.

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Suriname Online Sources

 * Suriname Emigration and Immigration – Wiki page with additional larger databases which also include Netherlands

Suriname Background

 * Dutch migrant settlers in search of a better life started arriving in Suriname (previously known as Dutch Guiana) in the 19th century with farmers arriving from the Dutch provinces of Gelderland and Groningen.
 * In 1683, Suriname was sold to the Dutch West India Company. The colony developed an agricultural economy based on African slavery. The Netherlands abolished slavery in 1863 and later imported indentured labor from the British Raj and the Dutch East Indies to keep the economy going.
 * Internal self governance was granted in 1954 and full independence in 1975. The prospect of independence prompted many to migrate to the Netherlands. Political instability and economic decline after independence resulted in even more migration to the Netherlands.
 * The Surinamese community back in the Netherlands is now almost as large as half of the population in Suriname itself (about 350,000).

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United States Online Sources

 * !820-1880 Dutch Immigrants to America, 1820-1880, ($), index
 * 1831-1877 Nederland. Emigranten naar overzeesche gebiedsdelen, 1831-1876 (Emigrants to Overseas Territories) 1831-1877 With: Nederland. Bevolkingsregister Emigranten naar Amerika en andere landen 9Population register Emigrants to America and other countries) 1831-1877
 * 1881-1894 Dutch Immigrants: New York Passenger Lists, 1881-1894 ($)
 * 1946-1963 Canada and U.S., Dutch Emigrants, 1946-1963, at Ancestry ($), index/images
 * United States Emigration and Immigration – Wiki page with additional larger databases which also include Dutch

United States Background
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 * Overseas emigration of the Dutch started around the 16th century, beginning a Dutch colonial empire. The first Dutch settlers arrived in the New World in 1614 and built a number of settlements around the mouth of the Hudson River, establishing the colony of New Netherland, with its capital at New Amsterdam (the future world metropolis of New York City). Nowadays, towns with prominent Dutch communities are located in the Midwest, particularly in the Chicago metropolitan area, Wisconsin, West Michigan, Iowa and some other northern states. Sioux Center, Iowa is the city with the largest percentage of Dutch in the United States (66% of the total population).
 * For greater detail on locations of early Dutch forts and settlements, early Dutch governments, and the Anglo-Dutch Wars that transferred New Netherland to British control, see Dutch colonization of the Americas", in Wikipedia.

Notarial Records
For the period before 1812, look at notarial records of Amsterdam, Rotterdam, and other harbor towns such as Dordrecht. There are comprehensive indexes for most of these places. Immigrants often obtained notarized documents before leaving the country. For more information, see the "Notarial Records" section.

The collection Noord-Amerika Chronologie (North America Chronology) contains 5,000 cards abstracted from Amsterdam notarial records. It covers 1598 to 1750 and gives places of origin of immigrants to New Netherland (modern day New York, New Jersey, and Delaware). The collection is available on microfilm at The New York State Library. The address is:

The New York State Library Cultural Education Center Empire State Plaza Albany, NY 12230 Telephone: 1-518-474-5355 E-mail: [mailto:circ@mail.nysed.gov circ@mail.nysed.gov] Internet: www.nysl.nysed.gov

Immigration into the Netherlands

 * Male immigrants from Rheinland and Westfalen, Prussia Bergh land became part of Gelderland
 * Female immigrants from Rheinland and Westfalen, Prussia Bergh land became part of Gelderland

Indonesian Repatriation
Over 10% of the "Indo-Europeans" took Indonesian citizenship after Indonesian independence. Most retained full Dutch citizenship after the transfer of sovereignty to Indonesia in 1949. In 1949, 300,000 Eurasians who had been socialized into many Dutch customs were repatriated. The Dutch established a repatriation program which lasted until 1967.[76] Over a 15-year period after the Republic of Indonesia became an independent state, virtually the entire Dutch population, Indische Nederlanders (Dutch Indonesians), estimated at between 250,000 and 300,000, left the former Dutch East Indies. Most of them moved to the Netherlands.

Suriname Emigration
The choice of becoming Surinamese or Dutch citizens in the years leading up to Suriname's independence in 1975 led to a mass migration to the Netherlands. This migration continued in the period immediately after independence and during military rule in the 1980s and for largely economic reasons extended throughout the 1990s. The Surinamese community in the Netherlands numbered 350,300 as of 2013. Most have a Dutch passport and the majority have been successfully integrated into Dutch society.

For Further Reading
Many additional sources are listed in the FamilySearch catalog: