| Genealogy Smits | Genealogy Kolner | Ancestors | Links | ||||
Preface
This is the genealogy of the Dutch Smits family - before 1813 the German Schmitz family - and the Kolner family. This genealogy is based on the ancestral history of:
Christiaan Theodorus Smits (1892-1967)
&
Hendrika Wilhelmina Kolner (1893-1986)
The research has been mainly conducted by their daughter Mrs. W.M. Aben-Smits.
The Church records and Civil registration records that are being kept at the Gelders Archief in Arnhem and the Historisch Centrum Overijssel in Zwolle have been the main source for the information on the Dutch branches. The Kirchherten RC church records and the records of the Civil Registration of the former municipality of Pütz as published on the CD-1 of the "Westdeutsche Gesellschaft für Familienkunde", have been an important source for the information on the Schmitz branches in our tree. The last few years an increasing number of familiy trees as well as on-line searchable databases have been made available via the Internet, enabling us to extend and improve the data held in our family tree. Please use the Links option on this page to access some of those sources.
Should you require additional information with respect to the research or should you like to contribute information that may be of interest please contact:
or direct an e-mail to:
If you have comments with respect to the content of the pages or if any of the information, either direct or as a result of insufficient source referencing, infringe upon rights resulting from your own publications or research, please inform us immediately.
Regions, towns, villages and family names of interest.
The German region of interest is the so called Erftlandschaft. The Erft is a small river running from Pesch (south of Mechernich) in a north-eastern direction to Düsseldorf where it joins the Rhine river. This region was and still is a largely agricultural region. In this region lots of old and often small villages can be found like Kirchtroisdorf, Jackerath, Elsdorf, Pütz, Esch, Oberembt, Niederembt, Kallrath etc. For our Smits or rather Schmitz genealogy the most important villages are Kirchherten and Grottenherten which form today a twin village. Information with respect to this twin village can be found via this German link: www.kirch-grottenherten.de
Most of the Schmitz ancestors lived in Grottenherten, but they were christened and there were married in the RC St. Martinus church in Kirchherten.
The main surnames of interest in this region are:
The Dutch regions of interest are de Achterhoek in the province of Gelderland and Twente in the province of Overijssel.
The most important towns/villages in de Achterhoek are:
The surnames of interest are:
In Twente the towns/villages of interest are:
The surnames of interest are: