GO924: Dutch Marriage and Life Histories from 1600 to 1999

GO924 is a dataset of marriages conducted in the Netherlands between 1600 and 1999, derived from a genealogical database. It includes anonymized information on spouses' lifespans, marriage ages, and birth, marriage, and death locations, with urban/rural classification for events before 1800. The data was compiled by Corry Gellatly of Utrecht University from over 924 contributed family tree files after error-checking.

Use Cases

• Analyzing trends in marriage age and lifespan over four centuries based on spouse information.
• Studying historical migration and settlement patterns based on birth, marriage, and death location data.
• Investigating the urban-rural transition in the Netherlands before 1800 using the 5,000-inhabitant threshold classification.
• Modeling familial longevity patterns based on the included lifespan data for spouses and their parents.

Strengths

• Covers a 400-year time range from 1600 to 1999.
• Includes multi-generational data with information on spouses and their parents.
• Data underwent an error-checking process using the TreeChecker application before inclusion.
• Provides urban/rural classification for locations between 1600 and 1800 based on a specific population threshold.

Limitations

• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Data may reflect bias inherent to user-contributed genealogical sources.

Provenance

Source

GenealogieOnline.nl user-contributed family tree (GEDCOM) files.

Collection Method

Files were error-checked and combined into a single database (GO 924 set). Duplicate marriages were identified and a random duplicate selected.

Time Range

1600-1999

Geography

Netherlands (place of marriage)