INTRODUCTION

  The foundation (= stichting)

"Stichting Erfskip Terpdoarpen" was founded early 2004 and has -in short- as aim to collect, file and publish genealogy aspects as well as local history of the municipality of Ferwerderadeel in order to make the past visible in the present, at the same time enabling those who are interested to learn about the available information. By the way: the name "Erfskip Terpdoarpen" is Frisian for "Heritage Terptowns".
 

  Why Ferwerderadeel ?

The foundation is an initiative of three of the undersigned, (most of) whose forebears originate from this municipality. Over a fair number of years all three of us researched, collected and published information with regard to history and genealogy of Ferwerderadeel as individuals. In 2003 we got in touch and decided to tie up together by means of a foundation.
For quite some time Pyt Nauta, born and raised in Ferwerderadeel, has been assisting us in the background whereas there was a close cooperation with him in realizing several projects. After urging him a couple of times, Pyt finally agreed to step "on board" and joined the foundation as per December 1, 2007.
 

  The municipality

Ferwerderadeel is situated in the northern part of the province of Friesland. To the northeast it is neighboured by the municipality of (West)Dongeradeel, to the southeast Dantumadeel and Tietjerksteradeel, to the south Leeuwarderadeel, to the west Het Bildt and to the north the Waddenzee. These days the town of Ferwerd is the municipal "capital". The other towns are: Blija, Hogebeintum, Hallum, Marrum, Wanswerd, Genum, Janum, Jislum, Lichtaard, Reitsum and Birdaard. For good orders sake: Janum and Birdaard used to be part of Dantumadeel but due to reshuffling the Frisian municipalities in 1984, they became part of Ferwerderadeel. The municipality is a clay area and has agriculture as main activity. In the larger towns (Ferwerd, Hallum, Marrum and Birdaard) a living is also made by means of industry. 
Ferwerderadeel has a population of ca. 9,000 people.
 

  Why also in English ?

Relatively quite a lot of people emigrated from Ferwerderadeel, in particular to Michigan (Grand Rapids area) and New Jersey (Paterson area). Thanks to the Internet a lot of data on genealogy and history is made available and in the meantime more and more descendants of emigrants are trying to trace their ancestors, including ancestors from Ferwerderadeel and like to learn more about the way, circumstances and towns where their ancestors once lived. It may be assumed that in general researches across the "big pond" or "down yonder" don't read Dutch and since we'd like to share the information on this website with them too, it also has an English version.
 

  Volunteers

Let there be no mistake about it: our foundation is not intended to make any profit. It is the work of volunteers. Obviously we cannot do it all by ourselves and for that reason we are looking for volunteers who would be willing to support us in enlarging and upgrading the website e.g. by means of doing research in North America, Australia, etc., help in our search for old pictures of emigrants from Ferwerderadeel and/or their descendants, letters, recollections, etc., etc. While browsing the website you will notice that various friends from the USA already contributed to the site.