Roots tourism

Apparently, my Ancestor Swap Challenge I proposed last month was a bit too daunting, as nobody has taken me up to the challenge yet. So instead, I will talk about an aspect of the worldwide genealogy industry that I find fascinating: roots tourism.

Living in a country from where many people emigrated over the centuries (the Netherlands), we get a lot of tourists looking for their roots. I have several clients for whom I have prepared visits, doing research beforehand to find out exactly where their ancestors lived. In some cases, they went there themselves and in other cases I doubled as their tour guide.

I always learn a lot from these trips, especially about my own preconceptions about what is 'normal' :-) Like the time I said "your ancestor lived in the third house" and the client responded "what do you mean, I only see one house?" She had never seen houses that don't have yards between them and did not realize that those houses shared a wall. She saw one house, where I saw twelve!

Roberta Estes and Cheryl Ferverda looking for their ancestors' graves in Baard, Friesland

I am currently working with the archives in Friesland, one of the northern provinces of the Netherlands, to promote roots tourism. The Frisian archives are creating a 'roots package' for people of Frisian descent. They will research their immigrant ancestor's family tree back several generations and create a custom itinerary to show them where their ancestors lived. I participated in the trial last week, which was wonderful. An American client of mine, Roberta Estes, came over to see all the places I had found for her, together with her cousin Cheryl Ferverda. I wrote an impression about the first day of that trip on my blog.

Promoting roots tourism is pretty new in the Netherlands, but I think it has great potential. I know there are similar projects going on in Scotland and Ireland (the Homecoming, the Gathering). In Ireland, local historical societies were asked to reach out to the descendants of the people who left that area and to invite them to come back for a visit. It was a tremendous success. I think such a 'grassroots' approach would work very well in other countries of origin too.

Do you know of any other projects where people visited their places of origin? Do you know of any successful business models or marketing efforts? I would love to exchange ideas so please leave a comment or contact me via my website.

Yvette Hoitink, the Dutch Genealogist

As this is my first post, I will start by introducing myself. My name is Yvette Hoitink and I'm a professional genealogist from the Netherlands. I'll be blogging every fifth day of the month.

I decided to become a professional genealogist because I love solving complex family puzzles and don't care whether they are my own family or not. By charging for my services, I can afford to do genealogy several days per week instead of just in my spare time. Besides my genealogy business, I also work as a project manager in the IT department at the National Archives in The Hague and am a wife and mother of a three-year-old son.

I've been doing genealogy since I was 14 years old (I'll tell you how it all started in a future blog post). I've been researching a group of 6,000 emigrants from my father's home town of Winterswijk in Gelderland and the surrounding area, most of them distant cousins of mine one way or another. They left between 1840 and 1920 and settled mostly in the US, primarily in upstate New York, Wisconsin, Michigan, Minnesota and Iowa. I've been able to find over 4,000 of them in US records and have been able to help many of their descendants make the connection between their immigrant ancestor and records in Europe. Several of them asked me if I took on paying clients. And one day, about two years ago, I decided to do just that. It's been an amazing adventure that allowed me to do research on Dutch ancestors of people from all over the world: United States, Canada, Australia, United Kingdom, Sweden and South Africa.

Graves of Winterswijk people in Clymer, New York

My main platform is my website, Dutch Genealogy. It started out over 20 years ago, as "Yvette's Dutch Genealogy Homepage," a collection of links to other websites that had information relevant to people researching their Dutch heritage. There weren't many websites out there at all so mine was the first genealogical website in the country. Soon afterwards, I was asked to give lectures about internet genealogy. Since I was just 18 years old at the time, this was pretty daunting but a great opportunity. It was funny too, to be a young girl in a scene dominated by retired men. "What do you mean you're the speaker? We invited an expert!" I also wrote a book about internet genealogy together with a friend, that has been reprinted several times. So you could say I've been a genealogy hustler for about 20 years, but now I've finally gone pro.

Groninger Archieven

There are not that many professional genealogists in the Netherlands. The other day, when I introduced myself as a professional genealogist to a staff member at an archive, he asked "people actually pay for that?" with genuine surprise in his voice. I can see where he came from, as most people in the Netherlands live pretty close to where their ancestors are from. If they are interested enough to hire someone, they are usually interested enough to do the research themselves. But my specialty is doing research for people who don't live in the Netherlands and don't speak Dutch. As there are way more non-Dutch speaking people looking for a genealogist to help them find their Dutch ancestors than Dutch genealogists willing and able to report in English, I've definitely found my niche.

I provide a range of services. Besides the 'classic' services like research, translation, lecturing and writing, I also help prepare clients' trips to the Netherlands. This usually involves researching the families to see where they lived and worshiped. I will then use that information to create an itinerary. The client can either visit all those places himself, or he can hire me as a tour guide. I've also accompanied clients to the archives, to present them with the original documents that include information about their ancestors. That is always a very special moment. I love all the information that is available online, but nothing beats the historical sensation of original manuscripts.

As one of the few professional genealogists in the country, it can get lonely sometimes. That's why I love meeting genealogists from other countries and sharing ideas. I am proud to be a member of this new worldwide community and hope to learn a lot from you. I also look forward to meeting some of you later this month at Who Do You Think You Are Live in London. If you see a woman that looks like that picture in the first paragraph, and who is carrying a "Dutch Genealogy" tote bag, please introduce yourself!

Who Do You Think You Are Live 2013