Archives of Belgium Genealogy Site

The State Archives of Belgium, though I’m grateful for the digitized records they offered online, their genealogy site was an exasperating experience to navigate through in order to find the town and the town’s digitized records. Compared to today’s searchable databases, the old Belgium’s Genealogy site looks archaic and a chore to start a search.

The ‘old way’:

  • 1) First sign up and the process thereof,
  • 2) Then sign-in
  • 3) Find the page where the Parish and Civil links are listed, this is the page you actually start your search from.
  • 4) These links were hard to find on the page
  • 5) When those links are found.,you’re presented with a choice to search the parish records (up until 1796) or the civil ones (after 1796 ). Pick and Click
  • Now, you get to choose which of the provinces that you need for your research. Pick and Click
  • You finally reach the page of all of the towns listed in that province
  • The scrolling begins, scroll down, and scroll and scroll some more,
  • Pick and Click on the link of the the town you’re looking for. (municipality)
  • You’ve finally arrived at the years of digitized images of baptism, birth, marriage, and death or burial records for that town.
  • Now, the work begins

You’re probably exhausted before you even search the records. I know, I was

Now, the Archives of Belgium has made an incredible genealogy breakthrough. They have created an easy to understand and easy to use Genealogy Source searchable website.

The New Way:

Front Page: I placed arrows for this demonstration to help guide you through this simple search.

I’ve chosen marriage records of the town of Torgny, located in the Province of Luxembourg, Belgium and years 1760-1796 . The search brings up the Catholic parish to which the town is under jurisdiction (for lack of a better word) of.

You’ll see that I’ve selected the alphabetical index listings of marriages for this town and the year(s) to search through. This will take you to the viewer, where on the left side pane, shows you which indexes to choose from. Not only does it list marriages, but also baptismal and burial records

The beauty of this is, you can conveniently click at the left side pane to the years AND to each category of indexes and the years that are available. Find your ancestor’s name and the year of marriage in the index. From there you’ll be able to locate the digitalized marriage record easily with Archives of Belgium’s new Genealogy System.

There are a limited amount of Pick_Clicks. The format is neatly organized. The viewer displays the indexes, the types of vital records and years from which to choose from. You can easily go from one set of records to another from the left side pane.. Not only, do they display the vital records, they also provide additional genealogical information.

A wish come true!