Hi annemaj
I started this chat with a request for help and received a lot of good advice, since then I have been successively searching my Belgium family members, however, unlike you I knew they came from Antwerp. I have written below a guide on how to search for Antwerp records, the province of Antwerp has 160 municipalities of which Antwerp itself is one of these, this means if she was born in the province of Antwerp you have a choice of 160 municipalities to choose from. If she was not born in Antwerp province you have another 8 provinces to choose from with probably +1400 municipalities in total.
A Guide for Searching Belgium Family History on the Internet
To search for Belgium family records, I have been advised to use the website of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. Their web address is:
http://familysearch.orgThe Belgium Civil Registrations that they hold cover the period from the early 1600s to 1909 and are split into the following nine provinces, Antwerp, Brabant, East Flanders, Hainaut, Limburg, Liege, Luxembourg, Namur and West Flanders.
Each province consists of a number of municipalities, for example the province of Antwerp has 160 municipalities of which the city of Antwerp is one of these municipalities.
Each municipality is responsible for its own civil registrations. These are held in yearly books, one each for births, marriages and deaths.
All of the civil registration books have been scanned onto micro-film, however, the records are not computer searchable, they have to be searched manually.
So far I have only briefly searched the Antwerp municipality registers, these are in Flemish / Dutch and are split into the following groups.
Geboorten (Births)
Huwelijken (Marriages)
Overlijden (Deaths)
Huwelijksbijlagen (Marriage Supplement Records)
Huwelijkgafkondigingen (Marriage Banns)
Tienjarige tafels (10 year index for births, marriages and deaths)
Each book has an index which lists the names of the persons in the register along with the number of their particular record. From 1824 the index is located at the front of the book, for multi-year books the index is located at the beginning of each year. From 1882 the index is located at the back of the book.
From 1824 onwards the index is in alphabetical order, however, the names of any given letter are listed in the date of their registration order (from the 1st of January to the 31st December), this means looking for Stephany, you have to go through the whole list of S’s.
From 1833 onward the index and also the names are listed in alphabetical order.
This all sounds rather complicated, however, once you get use to the record formats they are not too difficult to use.
Guide for opening the website and accessing the Belgium Records.
Enter the following website address into goggle:
http://familysearch.orgWhen the Family Search website opens click on > Search
This opens the Discover Your Family History page, now click on > Browse All Published Collections
This opens the Historical Records Collections, scroll down and click on > Belgium Antwerp Civil Registration 1609-1909
This opens the Belgium Antwerp Civil Registration 1609-1909 page click on > Browse through 2,978,372 images
You are now on the page which lists the province of Antwerp 160 municipalities, click on > Antwerpen.
This will take you to the page which lists all the Antwerpen: Record Type and Years.
Hope this helps, best regards Wave Watcher
