(van) (de/der) Leur
You are visitor number at this site. Last updated April 25, 2016
©
2016 Annelies J. Schlitt
The use of any material derived from this website for commercial
purposes without permission is strictly forbidden.
Dorenbos
Hoogeveen
(van)(de/der)Leur
The Leur Family
Databases
I |
f one of your ancestors is a Leur (or Leurs),
you came to the right place. This is where
you can find your ancestor’s roots as far back as identifiable names and public
records permit. You will readily see who
all your Leur relatives are, and how they fit together as part of your now
instantly extended personal family tree.
The
Leur Family Databases integrate the Leur birth, marriage, and death statistics
buried in countless local church and civil archives throughout the Netherlands
and beyond. It is a work in progress as
new information and new information sources turn up, either through further
research by the author or from contributions from interested volunteers. Initially the emphasis has been on the
Netherlands, in some cases the origin country of these names. The plan is to extend the database to trace
Leur emigrants and their descendants to Germany, the United States, and the rest of the world.
There
is only one requirement for inclusion in one of these databases: the surname
(van/de/der) Leur, or Leurs, regardless of which Leur variant (see sidebar) or
how it was acquired. You get an
honorable mention if you are married
to any Leur, but to preserve our focus on the Leur names, any further research
into spouses and other significant others is left to you. Links to other databases are supported and
encouraged (see Feedback, below).
History of the Leur
Name
There is not one history,
but three histories of the Leur name:
Leur and Leurs are derived from German
immigrants with names like Löhr and Löhrs, respectively, and other forms such
as Loer(s), Loehr(s), Luurs, etc. The spelling changes to Leur resulted
from efforts to preserve the original German pronunciation in written
Dutch. This transition sometimes took years and progressed unevenly,
complicated by the largely illiterate population and the biases of the
recordkeepers—many of whom were church officials of German origin who likely
cringed at the Dutch spelling (pronounced “lawyers” in German, as in Freud).
Leur and Leurs are common in Amsterdam (always a favored destination for
immigrants) and in areas along the German border, especially Limburg
Province. Some of the original German names have nevertheless persisted
in the Netherlands and are not included in these databases.
Van Leur is rooted in the tiny village of Leur, Gelderland,
(pop. 130 today) just west of Nijmegen near the provincial border with
Noord-Brabant, and once important as the seat of a Roman Catholic Church
district (“Hoge Heerlijkheid Leur” under the Banner of Batenburg). Four
extended families of Van Leurs exist, three of whom settled in areas to the
west and northwest of Leur, on both sides of the border. The fourth
family travelled farther to their new home, to the wife’s hometown in
southeastern Utrecht Province. It is hard to determine whether these four
families were related to each other in any way other than their common point of
departure and chosen surname.
De Leur and Van De(r) Leur have their roots in
the village of De Leur, today part of the city of Etten-Leur, Noord-Brabant.
Not all Van De Leur families can be shown to be related to each other
because some pre-date the existence of documentation for this region. But
the largest concentrations of Van De Leurs in the Netherlands have been and
still are in Noord-Brabant. The De Leurs are less numerous and dispersed almost
entirely out of Noord-Brabant to the north and south. The names De Leur and Van De Leur, and
especially Leurs, are still common in the border regions of Belgium today.
Data Sources
The
major sources of data for this project were the numerous local municipal
archives throughout the Netherlands.
Most have comprehensive birth, marriage, and death records for the
entire population of the Netherlands since 1812, when mandatory civil
registration laws, including the
requirement for family surnames, went into effect—all initiated by Napoleon and
retained after his ouster. Most of these
records have already been indexed for computer access and are now available
online at no cost.
Prior
to 1812, only a few municipalities recorded birth, marriage, death, and/or
residency information of their subjects, and even those were spotty and
incomplete. To fill this gap in their
pre-1812 archives, Dutch municipalities have turned to the best source of such
information: church registers of past baptisms, marriages, and burials,
sometimes going back as far as the 16th century. As of today, many of these registers have
already been indexed and are available online along with the post-1812 data.
Despite
everyone’s best efforts, many gaps remain.
Lost files and records, recording mistakes, deficient standards,
spelling issues, indexing errors, and data-compiling screw-ups (mine) all
contribute to the difficulty of making sense of this overabundance of
data. One of the goals of this project is to navigate this thicket just once,
for the benefit of all those interested in identifying their Leur ancestors.
Another
cause of incompete data are the Dutch privacy laws. Birth and marriage data are made available to
these databases only after 100 years have passed, and deaths records, after 50
years. If you are looking for a recent
relative, this website is not the best place to look.
Getting Started…
Before
you start searching, take a little time to browse the database and
become familiar with the notation. Then read Search Tips to help you choose the best strategy for
finding your relative in this database.
If you don’t find him/her right away, try different strategies, as
suggested in that link.
Feedback Send to…
As
indicated earlier, collaboration with other interested family researchers is
essential for the integrity and completeness of this database. All are urged to contribute to this database
in any of the following ways:
1)
Report any Leur/Leurs relative you
cannot locate in this database!
2)
Fill in missing information, such as a date or a spouse.
3)
Insert missing family members, such as children or siblings, or an
additional marriage.
4)
Correct any mistaken data item or family relationship (location in the
tree).
5)
Confirm or correct a red
(“best-guess” location) entry in the database.
6)
Spelling is always an issue.
Should it be the “correct” spelling, the recorded spelling (to
facilitate further research), or the most easily searched spelling? Make a suggestion.
7)
Request a link to your genealogy website, either for the Links page or as a direct link from
a non-Leur spouse in this database to a corresponding principal in yours
(include your bookmark and request one in mine).
8)
Correct or suggest improvements to any other information published on
this website.
9)
Correct or suggest improvements regarding links, design, or other
technical features of this website.
Be
sure to include in your email adequate data identifying the database entry you
are referring to.
Privacy
Please
report any privacy concerns. If any
living individual requests to be taken out, I will be glad to comply
immediately (with the database entry, that is—not you!). As an example of a
workable policy, my siblings and I, all retired, have agreed to include
ourselves, but not our children and grandchildren, in the database. They can decide for themselves later when
they, uh, inherit this project.
© 2016 Annelies J. Schlitt
The use of any material
derived from this website for commercial purposes without permission is
strictly forbidden.