Foundation – Dutilh Family Foundation

The Dutilh Family Foundation has the following main objectives:

Maintain and support the interaction between members of the family
Stimulate collection and preservation of family heritage
Create a better understanding of the family history

Over the years, a range of activities has been organised:

As a relatively small family, the members have always been in fairly close contact with each other. In Rotterdam there was a family-tradition that on January 1^st family-members went to the house of the “pater familias” to wish each other a happy new year. That tradition still exists today although today the venue for this reunion is at home with one of the family-members, anywhere in the country;
Since 1982 every five years the fifth anniversary of the family-foundation is celebrated with a party;
Set-up of a family-archive, which is hosted since 1980 by the Rotterdam Municipal Archive. The index to that archive can be consulted on-line (www.stadsarchief.rotterdam.nl);
Since 1969 the Foundation has issued a magazine called the Dutilhiteiten (Dutilhities). This magazine is usually presented at the reunion on January 1^st, and contains both current and historical family news, birth, marriage and death announcements, gossip, photos and other titbits. On January 1^st 2014 the 46^th volume of no less than 62 pages saw the light of day. The last few years the number of articles in English is growing and now makes up about 25% of its content;
In the Netherlands the ‘Centraal Bureau voor Genealogie’ (Central Bureau for Genealogy www.cbg.nl) is the information and documentation centre for genealogy, family history and related sciences. Since 1910 that organisation annually publishes genealogies of approximately a dozen prominent Dutch families in a series titled Nederland’s Patriciaat (NP). The first Dutilh genealogy was published in volume 6, issued in 1915. Since then two more times an updated genealogy has been published in NP in 1955 and 1984. Another updated version of the Dutilh genealogy is foreseen for volume 95 which will be published in 2015;
In July 2014 a family-gathering has been held in Philadelphia, where around 25 descendants of the Dutilh-family in the USA gathered for the first time. Most of these had never met each other before. At the occasion of this event a special volume of Dutilhities was issued, with 63 pages of family-history, fully in English.
In July 2017 a family-gathering has been held in Clairac, the town where the family originates from. In 1695 Pierre Dutilh left Clairac for Amsterdam, and in 1718 Jacques Dutilh arrived in Rotterdam. In 1768 Etienne Dutilh left Rotterdam for an aprenticeship with his cousins, and finally he went to Philadelphia, where he arrived in 1783. Around 50 descendants of these men, from all over the world, together with their spouses (in total almost 70 people) were present at a weekend made possible by the very collaboration of the Clairac mayor and its citicens. A special volume of Dutilhities was issued, with 64 pages of history both of Clairac and the Dutilh-family. Articles are in English and French.