Municipal Archives

The municipal archives hold approximately 900 linear meters of records from the municipalities of Wassenaar and Voorschoten. Not only are the archives of the municipal governments and their predecessors managed here, but also the judicial, notarial, and orphan court archives, as well as baptismal, marriage, and burial records, and a large number of archives from churches, associations, and foundations. In addition, we have an extensive collection of maps and drawings, books, photographs, local newspapers, and other documentation.

The municipal archives do not hold the construction drawings; for this information, please contact the municipality’s building permit office. 

Digital Reading Room

Some of the source material from the municipal archives is available digitally.
You can view it below in our Digital Reading Room.

• Historical images. In the Visual Documents collection (Digital Photo Archive), you’ll find over 12,000 scans of photographs and postcards from Wassenaar dating from 1860 to the present, as well as older prints. Nearly 3,000 scans of photographs and postcards from Voorschoten have now been added to the collection. More scans of images from Voorschoten will follow.
• Newspaper Collection and Address Books. Are you looking for information about an event, a newspaper article, or an advertisement? Or are you looking for a person’s address or the names of all the residents on a street? The newspaper collection offers scans of *De Wassenaarsche Courant* from 1919–1941, *Weekblad voor Roomsch Wassenaar* from 1929–1930, *Roomsch Wassenaar* from 1929–1939, and *Groot Wassenaar* from 1933–1939. Due to copyright restrictions, we are unable to display the scans of *Het Wassenaars Nieuwsblad*/*De Morgenpost* from 1945–1992 and *De Wassenaarder* from 1951–1992. While you can search these newspapers, you can only view the scans during a visit to the municipal archives. In the address book collection, you will find scans of Wassenaar address books from 1917, 1923, 1927–1941, 1947, 1951–1952, 1960, and 1967, as well as scans of Voorschoten address books from 1953, 1957, 1961, 1964, 1965, 1967, 1971, 1972, 1975, and 1978.
• People, Records, and Registers. Through the "Records/Registers" and "People" sections, you can search the birth records from 1811–1912 (for both Wassenaar and Voorschoten), marriage records from 1811–1940 (Voorschoten through 1932), and death records from 1811–1963 (Voorschoten through 1960) from the civil registry of Wassenaar and Voorschoten. The marriage appendices have also been added to the marriage records for Wassenaar and Voorschoten from 1812 to 1842. Scans of all records and appendices are also displayed. Through “Records/Registers” and “People,” you can search the Reformed baptismal records of Voorschoten from 1621–1811 by name. Scans of these baptismal records are also displayed. The baptism, marriage, and burial registers, as well as the parish registers of Wassenaar, are available for viewing (search for DTB-W* or gaarder*). These are not indexed by name.
  The population registers of Wassenaar from 1839–1934 have also been scanned and can now be searched by name.
• Books and Magazines. You can view the catalog of the municipal archives library here. It contains titles of books, magazines, and reference folders about Wassenaar, Voorschoten, and the region. The number of titles will continue to grow in the coming period.

Offline content

The Voorschoten Municipal Archives has decided to remove all scans of anonymous postcards from its website. This involves more than 1,000 images. Recently, the magistrate’s court in The Hague fined Erfgoed Leiden for publishing anonymous postcards online. As a result of this ruling, we no longer consider it responsible to make these types of images available online.

More information:

• Inventories in Voorschoten