Genealogy Research Resources

This site uses a database containing genealogical information on emigrants from the Dutch province of Drenthe, which was compiled by researcher Arend Everts from Hoogeveen. He searched the 1840-1930 census records of all towns in this province and several towns in the provinces of Groningen and Overijssel for 'departed persons'. The data was then checked against information from the archives of Pella, Iowa, Holland, Michigan and Grand Rapids, Michigan. In addition to the emigrant indexes (passenger lists 1820-1880 and American census records 1850-1870) published by Robert Swieringa, 'Emigrants from Drenthe' aims to be a handy resource for genealogical research.

Link to and instructions for using the Dutch Drenlias database.

From 1936 to 1938, over 2,300 former slaves from across the American South were interviewed by writers and journalists under the aegis of the Works Progress Administration. These former slaves, most born in the last years of the slave regime or during the Civil War, provided first-hand accounts of their experiences on plantations, in cities, and on small farms. Their narratives remain a peerless resource for understanding the lives of America's four million slaves. What makes the WPA narratives so rich is that they capture the very voices of American slavery, revealing the texture of life as it was experienced and remembered. Each narrative taken alone offers a fragmentary, microcosmic representation of slave life. Read together, they offer a sweeping composite view of slavery in North America, allowing us to explore some of the most compelling themes of nineteenth-century slavery, including labor, resistance and flight, family life, relations with masters, and religious belief.