Pictures of my grandparents and family from father's side (left) and mother's side (right)

These internet pages and the genealogy database are created and maintained by W. Leo Meerts. Almost all my genealogical data is published here. Much of the information (in particualr the data from Dworp, Belgium and the connections to The Netherlands) has been collected by my nephew Jean Joseph Meerts. The amount of work he invested in the research of the Meerts family stimulated me to present the data on this web page and to continue collecting more information and updating the existing data.

Three main branches are found:

• The branch (Meerts) originating in Belgium near Brussels (around 1590) with extensions to the Netherlands: Belgium-Netherlands branch
• A branch (Meerts) mainly found in Dutch Limburg near Venlo and Weert, dated back to the 15th and 16th century: Limburg branch
• The Meerte family for which sources have been found that goes back to at least 1173.
  

It is currently assumed that the first two branches are descendants from the last one Meerte. The arguments for the Belgium-Netherlands branch are very strong, those for the Limburg branch are more speculative.

Other information:

• The Meerts Name: Background information on the origin of the family name "Meerts" (In Dutch).
• Other databases of family families possibly related to the Meerts family; some of them with slightly different family names such as Merts, Mertz etc.
• References to genealogy databases and pages

I like to acknowledge the help of many persons who communicated additions, corrections and details with me.

I have extensively made use of the Rijksarchief in België and refer to their site and scans of the archives. If you want to follow the direct source links given on my webpages you will have to create an account. For clearity the full links to the Microfisches are not shown, but can be reached by pressing on the link. You are then lead to the proper book/scanned micofische, but you will have to chose the page number. In general I give two numbers: The first one refers to the scanned page (that is the one to use), the second one to the actual page in the book. Un fortunately the Rijksarchief decided to change the http-links to their webpages sometime around the beginning of 2023. I changed the links according to their new format, but it is possibe some of the old links have remained.

• Persons still living: The detailed information of these persons has been removed (including Christian names) from the database, but is to a large extent known to the author.

• Although available all information including (family) names is removed for a number of persons; they will show up as "Name Suppressed".

• You will encounter "?.?" or "N.N.". It stands for "Name unkNown", even to the author