Witte Wieven: Ghostly Ladies Of The Marshes
Probably as long as people have roamed the earth and have been able to tell stories, they have enjoyed scaring each other with spooky stories about the creatures of the night. In Twente, in the eastern part of the Netherlands near the German border, one of the favorite spooky creatures is the "Witte Wief" which literally translates as "White Lady". Some, however, argue that the word "wit" is derived from the old word "wid" which means "wise" and therefore "Witte Wieven" are not white ladies but wise ladies.
According to local folklore, these white ladies roam the marshes at night and lure people into the swamps to drown them there. They are also regarded as omens of death. On the other hand, there are sagas in which they appear as wise women that help and cure. Whether evil or good, they are always described as long-haired women with long white gowns. I once hiked in the moors here at dusk on a cold, misty autumn afternoon and I can assure you that it was very easy to mistake the wisps of fog for ghostly creatures in long white dresses. They are misleading also, making the trail hard to see. Ending up in the swamp was a real danger. A spooky experience indeed. However, scholars believe there is more to the story than creepy surroundings and a vivid imagination.
When looking at a baptism record we tend to look for the primary data like date and place of baptism and birth, names of the parents and name of the child. Witnesses are often ignored, which is a shame because they can provide a beautiful insight into the kinship and friendships. Witnesses aren't just people that happened to be there when the child was baptized; they are usually very close relatives or dear friends. I most cases, the witnesses are the grandparents. This can be vital information to push your tree back in time. 
When people emigrate, the most valuable possessions they take along are their culture and their language. Much of that erodes over time and usually the third and fourth generations know little about their foreign cultural baggage. However, sometimes something special happens and culture and language do not fade but are still passed on from one generation to the next albeit with alterations and influences of the surrounding new culture.
"Woensdag, gehaktdag!" ("Wednesday, minced meat day!") That is how it used to be up until the 1960s: on Wednesdays, virtually every Dutch housewife would serve minced meat for dinner. Even today, more traditional families and elderly people eat minced meat on Wednesday. Now why would a whole country eat the same food on the same day?
The very first Dutch railway opened in 1839 and ran between Amsterdam and nearby Haarlem. It was built by the Hollandsche IJzeren Spoorweg Maatschappij (HIJSM or HSM), which was founded in 1837 by private investors.
Until WW II, Dutch houses did not have hot running water or central heating. Coal stoves provided most families with heating and a cooking place. Heating up large amounts of water on a coal stove is a time-consuming task. Especially on washing day — typically Monday— that posed a problem, since washing was already time-consuming in itself.
Although finding a date of birth can be exiting in itself for the genealogist, it is in the end just that: a date. Wouldn't be great to know what was happening on the day your great grandmother was born? What was the weather like, what historic events took place, what did famous people do that day... The great thing is that you actually can!
When researching more recent generations, it is not unlikely to get confronted with ancestors that did not survive WW2. Some may have died on duty as a soldier, others may have found a sad ending in one of the concentration camps. Sometimes ancestors seem to simply "disappear". To trace these ancestors can be hard, but the Dutch War Grave Foundation can sometimes shed some light on the case.
A min, minnemoeder or zoogster is a wet nurse, a woman who breastfeeds somebody else's child. Today nobody in the western world would consider hiring someone to breastfeed their baby: either they do the breastfeeding themselves or they give the baby a bottle. So why did our ancestors use wet nurses?