Hi i'm new, i'm trying to get information on my husbands family, surname VAN HOO

Question:

Hi i'm new, i'm trying to get information on my husbands family, surname VAN HOOF from Holland?

My son needs this for an English assignment and i can't find a web site that will give me family history as i haven't got much only a last name & country of birth. Any help would be apprieciated. Thanks

Best Answer - Chosen by Asker: I love Dutch research...they make it amazingly easy.

You don't give the year of emigration, but I'll sketch in the basics.

If your ancestor came after 1920, you'll have a hard time getting the info you need in a quick turnaround. It's not on the internet. The only way you could get it today would be to travel to the nearest National Archives and Records Administration regional record center and pulling his/her naturalization petition.

If your ancestor came between 1893-1920, Ellis Island probably has the arrival records for you. To get the hometown, etc, you might be in luck and it might be on the passenger list.
www.ellisisland.org

If your ancestor came before 1893 (or doesn't show up on Ellis Island) then check the Battery Conservancy records at www.castlegarden.org. This was the Port of New York Immigration center pre-Ellis Island. Not all of their records are online yet, but a good number are.

If your ancestor came pre-1875 check out a book at a large library with a real genealogy section called "Dutch to America". It was a pre-internet resource where someone went through and pulled all the names of Dutch immigrants from passenger lists available at the time. The beauty of it is that many of the entries list hometown in the Netherlands.

From there you'll want to visit the GenLias website which is a project of the various provincial archives in the Netherlands. The drawback is that records from Amsterdam aren't there. The plus side is that they have an English option.
http://rijksarchiefdienst-02.apcare.net/...

There are nearly 200 years' worth of records on there. It's probably the easiest country in the world to research because of its small size and heavy organization.

Hope this helps...post back if you need more.

PS, when you search the surname, try it with and without the "van". It wasn't consistently used in the Netherlands through time, so you'll do better searching the root most of the time.