Choosing a Last Name

I recently found a website called Tresoar - which is the Frisian Historical and Literary Centre. Since I used genlias to confirm that some of my grandmother's family had come from the Friesland area in the Netherlands - I thought I'd see what this website had to offer. Fortunately the website has an English version so I could do some basic searches without too much trouble.

My most interesting find was the database called "Family names 1811". In 1811 all Friesland residents had to register a last name. Up until that time many people used their father's first name as their last name instead of a family last name. A quick search of the Veldkamp last name showed me my grandmother's great-great-grandfather - Johan Hendrik Veldkamp - declaring "Veldkamp" as his last name in 1811. And the most exciting part was they have an actual scanned image of the book where this was recorded (shown below).



This shows Johan Hendrik Veldkamp - from the city of Kollum - registering his last name as "Veldkamp". It also shows that he has one daughter - Saapke Catharina - who is just three months old. This matches the other records I've found which show that Johan was married on December 23, 1810 and had his first child on September 30, 1811.

I love that the scanned image appears to have his signature at the bottom also - just a little peek into the past.