“It doesn’t happen very often that people look for their female ancestor,” says Erwin de Leeuw of the Drenthe Archives, “usually people just use their own surname.” According to him, the search for the female line is not so much more difficult, but it does seem more confusing. “You often go down a straight line from your ancestor. If you search back along the female line, the surname constantly changes. You have the name of your mother and that of your grandmother and a grandmother and so you continue looking for a founding mother. “
A lot can be found in birth certificates, baptism registration, marriage certificates, church registers and the death register. This often concerns data that is hundreds of years old, all of which can be found in the archive in Assen. “It’s actually self-explanatory,” De Leeuw continues, “the search actually works just like the ancestor’s line and we can help when visitors can’t find it.”
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