Open Archives (207 archives: Netherlands, Belgium, France, Suriname + US indexes)

searched live by Provara

What it holds

Civil registration (birth, marriage, death), church books, population registers, notarial and tax rolls, militia — 207 archives

Who runs it, and on what terms

Provider

Open Archieven (Coret Genealogie)

Licence for use here

CC0 (person data); scans excluded

Attribution

Link to the record page on openarchieven.nl and name the holding archive

Cost to search

free

Terms read

2026-09-06

Official documentation

https://www.openarchieven.nl/api/docs/

How to search it in Provara

1. Birth, marriage and death records: ask Provara for a birth, marriage or death by name, place and year.
2. Church books: ask Provara for a baptism or parish marriage.
3. Census returns: ask Provara where a family was living in a given census year.
4. Notarial records: ask Provara whether a notarial record names an ancestor.
5. Tax rolls: ask Provara whether a tax roll places an ancestor in a town.
6. Military service and pension files: ask Provara whether an ancestor served and what the file holds.
7. Provara searches this archive alongside every other live one, ranks what comes back by how many of the person's recorded facts each hit contains, and shows you the record with a ready citation. Nothing is added to your tree until you confirm it.

Record types here

• Birth, marriage and death records — Civil registration and church registers: the dates and parents that anchor every generation.
• Church books — Baptisms, marriages and burials kept by parishes, often the only record before the state began counting.
• Census returns — A household on one day: names, ages, birthplaces, occupations and relationships to the head. The backbone of placing a family in a decade.
• Notarial records — Contracts, wills, inventories and property transfers witnessed by a notary — dense with names and relationships.
• Tax rolls — Who owned or occupied what, assessed year by year — a census substitute where the census is lost.
• Military service and pension files — Enlistment, service, discharge and pension papers. Pension files in particular name spouses, children and witnesses.

Every licence on these pages was read from the archive's own terms on the date shown. Provara proposes only what a record it has read supports, shows the record beside the claim, and marks anything unsourced as a hypothesis. Nothing on this page states a fact about any person.